Advent
by Web of Obsidian
Summary: The Doctor put Gallifrey into a pocket universe, and now it's time to go searching for home. But despite escaping the horrors of war, Gallifrey is still a broken planet and has to rebuild. It might not be possible to survive until the Doctor finds them. And finding them could take a while - all of time and space is a lot to search through, even for a Time Lord.
1. Chapter 1

advent  
/ˈadˌvent/  
_noun  
_noun: advent; plural noun: advents  
**1**. the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.

* * *

Gallifrey had once been called the Shining World of the Seven Systems, and with good reason. It had been _magnificent_, the closest thing to what one might call perfection, revered across all of time and all the universe. And then they'd heard of the Daleks, some idiot's idea of genetic manipulation on some backwater planet and they'd thrown the Doctor onto Skaro, their seers foreseeing a time when the aliens would exterminate the entire universe with no hope of stopping them.

The fool hadn't been able to do it.

From then on the species had carried an inbred hatred for all Time Lords, and specifically for the Doctor. He'd fought them off time and again, but Gallifrey's wayward child rarely turned his eyes to his home world, and war brewed without his knowledge. By the time he came running back it was much too late.

_No more._

They used all the weapons they had, and when those didn't work they broke open the Omega Archives and used what they had there. And when those didn't work, they resurrected soldiers every single time they died and sent them back in the hopes to change the outcome of the battle, and again when those soldiers died, and again when they kept dying. Time was beyond hope of salvaging, it was knotted and tangled to the point where it would leave a ragged scar no matter what the outcome.

_No more_.

They resurrected Rassilon in the hopes that he would lead them safely into peace and glory once again, but to no avail. The supposed leader was mad with bloodlust and war and with the Glove, the Sash, and the Key, it was impossible to disobey him. He tried to break them free by destroying the rest of the universe and leaving them as a form of consciousness in the endless void. The High Council was in an emergency meeting doing just that, destroying the mind of Gallifrey's other renegade son, the Master, for their own salvation.

What had become of them? How could something so great have fallen so _far_?

* * *

"_You'd have hope! And right now, that is exactly what you don't have."_

The face of one of three Doctors smiled at him, and the General took a shuddering breath. The entire room was shaking around them, the entire _planet_, and it was a miracle the ceiling hadn't caved in and killed them all. It was a rather sturdy ceiling, perhaps they had a bit longer to do... to do _something._

They could put their lives, all of the lives of Gallifrey, into the hands of a madman, or they could burn, endlessly burn until the entire universe burned with them.

"It's delusional!" he said, shaking his head, so lost in the war that he couldn't ever see a way out. "The calculations alone would take... hundred of years!"

"_Oh, hundreds and hundreds!"_ the Doctor agreed.

"_But don't worry."_ Another face waved away his concerns dismissively. _"I started a __**very**__ long time ago."_

"_Calling the War Council of Gallifrey, this is the Doctor!"_

"_You might say,"_ and now the face was grinning like a fool, _"that I've been doing this all my lives!"_

Around the room, holograms began to spring to life, surrounding the three faces of the Doctor that were already there. The elderly man that the General quite clearly remembered breaking into the repair rooms and stealing a faulty TARDIS capsule, the one they had forced to regenerate and the following regeneration that had landed on Earth – and somehow managed to repair his TARDIS with their primitive technology. The one that couldn't bring himself to destroy the Daleks, the one that had been to the Tower of Rassilon with the previous four. The one that they had put on trial against his future self, and good heavens above, if that hadn't been a migraine for all of them, and so, _so many more._

"_Good luck!"_

"_Ready!"_

"_Stand by!"_

"_Commencing calculations."_

"_Hang in there!"_

"_Across the boundaries that divide one universe from another..."_

"_Just got to lock onto these coordinates!"_

"_And now for my next trick...!"_

The General shook his head weakly, turning to look at Androgar next to him. His second-in-command looked back with wide eyes. "I didn't know when I was well off," he muttered. "All twelve of them!"

"_No, sir!" _The unfamiliar, authoritative voice had the General spinning around to see where it was coming from. A thirteenth hologram sprang to life in an empty space between the others. _"All thirteen!"_

The entire room shook again, and the General was knocked to the floor.

"Sir!" The Commander looked up from a computer panel. "The Daleks know that something is happening! They're increasing their firepower!"

Dust crumbled down from the ceiling, and the lights began to flicker on and off. Perhaps the ceiling wasn't as stable as he had originally thought.

_You'd have hope! _

_And right now, that is exactly what you don't have._

"Do it, Doctor." It went against every fiber of the General's being to flee from battle, but what choice did they have? "Just do it."

The Doctor looked at him with old eyes.

"_Do it_,"he ordered.

"_Okay." _The other Doctors moved to their consoles. _"Gentlemen, we're ready."_

"Find something to hold onto," the General said, looking at Androgar. "Something tells me this isn't going to go smoothly."

"Yes, sir." Nodding shakily, the other man turned and began relaying the order to the others. The High Command had abandoned all pretense of dignity and clung to whatever they could in the hopes that it would provide some small modicum of stability.

"_Geronimo!"_

"_Allons-y!"_

"_Oh, for God's sake... Gallifrey stands!"_

Echoes of whooping shouts, the not-quite battle cries, flew around and around the room.

The entire Citadel seemed to be shaking by this point, the Daleks raging fury spurring them on to ever increasing firepower, and the General coughed and peered up through the dust with watering eyes. The rotating hologram above the table continued to glow even as the voices of the Doctors became garbled and slowly began to disappear, one by one until there was nothing but silence.

_Gallifrey stands._

Convinced the floor wouldn't send them flying off their feet once more, one of them got up and rushed to a computer panel that was sparking, smoke pouring out from the sides of it. Tearing off a piece of their ruined robes, they covered their hands so the screen wouldn't burn them and let out a hysterical laugh when the results came up.

"We've moved!" he gasped. "The entire planet- we're in some kind of a pocket universe – no suns, no moons, but gravity is stable, there... there doesn't seem to be anything but us... but no Daleks, either." Hands shaking, he turned back, seeming unsure whether he should smile or whether he should collapse with relief.

"He did it." The General looked back at the hologram above the table. "That madman actually did it!"

_Gallifrey stands_.

* * *

The screaming seemed to stop all at once.

Children slowly climbed out of empty pipes, from around corners, from underneath rocky crevices in the remains of what used to be rows of beautiful spiraling towers, and they stared upwards in confusion, squinting into the light as the smoke cleared in a breeze. It wasn't bright, per say, there were no stars, no suns, no moons, only a dim glow that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, yet it was enough to puzzle the children into silence.

An elderly woman let out a shuddering gasp and dropped to her knees, prostrating herself in the dirt, and a grown man actually stumbled backwards in shock before bursting out into tears. Parents tugged their sons and daughters close, staring, sobbing, but still it was silent.

"Mother?" A boy tugged at a woman's sleeve. "Mother, what is it? What's the orange?"

She was too stunned to answer.

"It's the sky!" A man's shout finally broke the heavy atmosphere, voicing all of their thoughts in a few simple words. "Oh, heavens above, I can see the sky!"

"The sky! I can see the sky!"

"The sky! The sky! The sky!"

As quickly as silence had descended it was gone again, a fleeting moment in the endless amounts of time. Now the planet was full of cries and shouts and screams once more, but this time, they were of joy.

* * *

Romanadvoratrelundar had been Lady President of Gallifrey at the beginning of the war, but then the people called for a _man_, for a _soldier_, and the High Council had gone behind her back and resurrected Rassilon, who had promptly seen her presidency taken away and had her instated as Lady Chancellor. A high position, well-respected, but purely for politics, and there was no negotiating with the Daleks. Still, it was too good of a position to pass down without being thoroughly scorned – if she refused to accept she would be seen as a petty woman, who only wanted her presidency back and wouldn't stand for anything less.

Rassilon essentially forbid her from voting, kept her locked out of all things that he discussed in the Senate or with the High Council. A figurehead was all she was. A puppet, and Rassilon was the one that was pulling the strings.

It had been a surprise to see the General practically running down the hallways to meet her. The man was military straight through to his bones, and never broke his stern composure.

Was he _smiling_?

"My Lady Chancellor!" he gasped, hysterical laughter bubbling from his lips. He clasped her hands in his, and she noted with a frown that they were shaking. "Oh, my Lady Chancellor, he did it! That crazy fool did it!"

"Did what?" she asked sharply. "General, show some composure and explain what you are talking about. I can hardly understand you when you offer me no context."

The General paused, cleared his throat, but still he smiled and he hadn't let go of her hands. "The Doctor stole the Moment, he intended to use it to- to destroy Gallifrey, to destroy the Time Lords and the Daleks alike."

Romana knew this – she had helped him into the archives. She knew Rassilon was planning something massive, and would much prefer that it was ended quickly and efficiently. The bloodshed had gone on for long enough.

She kept quiet on this fact, however.

"And- oh, I don't know what happened- I have no clue how they did it-"

"They?" she cut in. "I believe you had said _he _the first time, singular."

"Yes!" The General laughed again. "Him! The Doctor! Lady Chancellor, _all thirteen _of them, all thirteen! The stasis cubes, they've locked Gallifrey in a pocket universe, we're suspended out of time, but the Daleks destroyed themselves in their own crossfire. We're alive, and they _aren't_. That man, insane though he may be, he put us here and he can get us out. We're alive, Lady Chancellor, we're _alive_!"

The words numbed her brain, brought everything to a grinding halt, and she swayed slightly. "Show me," she demanded.

He promptly dragged her to a window, brushing aside the broken glass. "The sky! No Daleks. No smoke. No light, either, but they couldn't bring our suns along, could they? No Daleks, no smoke, no fire... we can see the sky again."

For a moment she understood the urge to laugh, to break composure and just _laugh_, because it was so very like that man to do the impossible and pull it off without a problem. But it was quickly quashed, and she stiffened, feeling as though ice water was suddenly running through her veins.

"I must inform Rassilon," she said abruptly. "He's been planning something, him and the High Council, and whatever it is, it won't work now. They need to know we're safe before they do something drastic-"

She cut herself off before she could potentially let something slip and commit treason, but the General shook his head.

"We lost contact with the High Council some several hours ago," he informed her. A pause. "Rassilon is insane. As far as I know, whatever plans he had in mind during that emergency session failed, and to that, I say good riddance!"

"I should at least see if anyone is still alive down there," she argued. "They are all mad with power, and something must be done about them."

"Hmm." He seemed to agree with her, at any rate, so she turned to leave. "Godspeed, Lady Chancellor."

As Romana walked down the hallway at a brisk pace – she didn't _run_, Lady Chancellors certainly didn't _run_ – she could still hear the General talking to himself behind her.

"I can see the sky..."

* * *

The meeting room for the High Council was even further beneath their shattered Citadel than the War Rooms where the Gallifreyan High Command were frequently found. Romana never broke stride as she continued to walk, down winding stairs and the walkways over gaping chasms where the Daleks' attacks had split the crust of the planet itself and down and down and down...

The doors were closed, so she knocked. She'd probably die if she walked in without showing some form of respect.

A couple moments had passed, and she wondered if she had missed the response. She knocked again and pressed her ear to the crack between the doors, but there was no reply save silence.

Perhaps their plans did fail. Steeling herself for whatever was inside, she pushed the doors open and stepped through.

They had tried something- oh, it was clear that they had tried something, but they had _failed_, they had failed and it was so plainly obvious. The meeting table had been overturned by some unknown force, there were bodies strewn across the cracked tiled floors. The seer's eyes were open but glassy, never to see again.

There were only four that were conscious, two dressed in the formal robes of the Presidential Guard and two Romana recognized – they were dressed in commoners robes despite their high status, for they had voted against what Rassilon wished and were thus punished appropriately. Those two were kneeling on the floor with a guard next to something she couldn't quite see, and one guard was standing.

"My Lady Chancellor!"

One looked up, and made a helpless motion.

"What happened?" she demanded to know.

"The Final Sanction," came the instantaneous response from the guard on the left, the one standing. "He wished to destroy the rest of the universe and have the Time Lords ascend to a higher form of consciousness – he sent a- a signal, he said, back in time to the Untempered Schism, to link us to the outside."

"And how would that be of any use to us?" Romana said derisively, emphasizing each word.

"Only two Time Lords were known to escape the Time War," the shamed man said softly. "The Doctor and the Master."

She paused.

"...The drumbeat?"

It wasn't hard to believe. The Master claimed to hear a drumbeat, an echo of four that nobody else could hear, and it drove him mad before he had even graduated from the Academy. That the High Council would ruin such a brilliant life for their own gains didn't require a huge stretch of the imagination.

"And then what?"

"They pulled Gallifrey out of the Time Lock," the kneeling guard said quickly. "To Earth, where the Doctor and the Master were. And the Doctor fell through the ceiling, he had a gun, primitive, human, but it would work. Rassilon refused to bring the Master back with us. He was... diseased, he claimed. The Doctor could shoot the Master, one end of the link, or Rassilon, the other, and either way he would be taken back with us."

"He told the Master to get out of the way," the first guard continued. "He shot the device the Master had used to amplify the signal, and was prepared to die as the Time Lock pulled us back in. And then the Master... the Master, he..."

"He saved us," the shamed woman spoke for the first time. She was elderly, from what Romana could see, hardly a soldier. Someone who would vote for peace.

"None of us could do anything," the standing guard added. "It was... we could hardly question Rassilon."

"Something had gone wrong in his resurrection, probably the humans messing something up. His essence isn't locked onto his body, he could do so much more than what he might have been able to do, but it is destroying him. He attacked Rassilon..." And the shamed woman pointed to the overturned table. Romana turned to look where she was pointing, only to see a crumpled set of robes and a staff lying a few feet away on the floor, metal glove wrapped tightly around it. Rassilon's resurrected body had crumbled into dust after the onslaught.

"Dead." The woman nodded firmly. "Quite dead."

"Hold on." Romana shook her head, trying to clear it. Gallifrey lived, Rassilon _dead_, the Doctor had survived against impossible odds and saved them all... "Hold on. You said _is_ about the Master, _is_, present tense. Is he...?"

She stepped forward, and then she could see what the three were kneeling around and why they seemed so unsure of what to do. The man curled into a tight ball on the floor could only be the as they watched, a pulse of energy seemed to run through him, and his body flickered blue. She could see straight through his skull.

"Get him to the medical rooms," Romana ordered without thinking. "And change into respectable robes when you get the opportunity. Do not fear the war, Gallifrey is saved, something which I will explain later. Someone remove the bodies from this room, inform the High Council that they are disbanded until further notice."

"My Lady Chancellor," one of the guards began, even as the two shamed picked the Master up by his arms, one on either side of him, and started carrying him towards the door. "You do not have the authority-"

"I think you will find that Rassilon was never officially elected," Romana said coolly. "I was, and still am, Lady President of Gallifrey, and I most certainly _do _have the authority. Now do as I say before I relieve you of your post."

The guard stiffened into a salute, face going blank. "Yes, ma'am!"

Oh, she had far too much work to do.

* * *

Elsewhere in the universe, some unknown time, some unknown place, a little blue box drifted aimlessly through the stars. Inside the box was far more than one would expect, but perhaps, excluding the large amount of space and the mechanics of it all, the most interesting thing inside that box was a man.

A man, who, currently, at this moment, was standing in front of a screen by a round console, eyes flickering over intersecting circles and lines faster than anyone should possibly be able to read.

"Aha!" The exclamation was quiet, but it seemed very loud in the otherwise empty room. "Gotcha."

* * *

**So! Here's my take on how the Doctor is going to go about finding Gallifrey. It's going to focus on a few key points of view, some from the Master and some from Romana. Some from the Doctor and Clara, and a few old companions make a cameo. There's also some various Time Lords/Ladies that show up along the line, and everything all sort of ties together in the end, so don't worry if it seems a bit disjointed at first. I've got all the chapter summaries written out and most of the chapters handwritten, so it's just a matter of getting everything typed up by this point. This'll be updated daily, and there's twenty-five chapters in total.**

**As always, feedback is appreciated.**


	2. Chapter 2

It had been approximately a month since the sky had changed. Tianna hadn't understood what it meant, the sky changing like that, but it couldn't have been a bad thing. The planet was quiet now, and there weren't any live Daleks. Plenty of casings, yes, and plenty of crashed ships, but Iota and Viram were sleeping easier at night. Tianna stayed up to keep guard.

They'd been born sometime during the war, although it was hard to know when. The matrons had said that time was tangled, and their parents had been killed so there was no way to know. Tianna was certainly the oldest, and Viram certainly the youngest, and Iota somewhere in the middle of the two of them. Three separate families, three children tossed together, three children left with nothing but each other when the shelter had been destroyed and everyone dead.

They weren't her real siblings, but she was all they had and they were all she had, and Tianna would take responsibility for them no matter what. She'd taken the two to the outskirts of what remained of the Forests of Prosperity, once a massive, sprawling ecosystem all its own, now little more than charred wood and the occasional withered tree. They hid in an alcove they'd constructed, rocks and scrap metal and thick branches to keep everything propped up. Tianna had a rifle she'd found not far from yet another corpse, and they were hoping that they could use it to get food.

She was very hungry. They were all very hungry. She hadn't known a time when they weren't all so thin, but something told her it wasn't quite meant to be like this.

However, with no forest where there used to be forest, and no water where there used to be water, the animals had mostly fled.

Tianna shook her head as she looked down at the remains of the bird on the ground. She should have gotten a smaller weapon, something more suited for hunting and not piercing through Dalekanium with a massive explosion upon impact. Three birds, three scrawny, measly birds, and they were hardly salvageable after the blast had hit them.

Iota and Viram were hiding back at their camp for now. She picked at some dry skin on her hands, blistered, unused to holding a weapon, and frowned. They were getting callouses, though, and her aim was getting better. She was getting better at this.

Three birds. Even Viram would still be hungry with only one to eat, and he was hardly more than a toddler. Twenty years old, maybe? She couldn't tell. Three birds wasn't enough, and they needed water. Maybe she could get down to one of the rivers and back without leaving them alone for too long, then she might be able to come up with some sort of soup.

Decision made, the young girl set off, rifle resting on her shoulder as she picked her way through the barren lands of their scarred and scorched planet. The light was dim, but it was enough to see by, and far away they were starting to rebuild the Citadel. She could see the lights, in the distance, too far for them to get to safely without climbing across miles of wreckage. The other two were too likely to fall and hurt themselves on the jagged metal edges, and she didn't entirely trust herself not to fall, either. At least the Daleks hadn't poisoned the water supply. They hadn't gotten around to doing that yet.

The water was flowing over the rocks, most of the riverbed dry from lack of rain. The only rain they had gotten was the attacks pouring out from Dalek ships, and between the heat and the destruction, she supposed they hadn't needed to poison the water supply. The river was hardly a river anymore, hardly even a creek.

She filled up her canteens as best she could with the trickling current, before glancing around her and starting to head back.

* * *

"My Lady President."

"_Do_ get up, General, I've told you far too many times now that you can dispense with the formalities."

"My apologies, Lady President."

The General straightened up from his bow and adopted a slightly less formal pose, although it could be argued that, in his case, that "slightly less formal" was still far too formal for anybody else. What need did they have for formalities now, when there was hardly anything left and no one to see their downfall but themselves?

Romana had slipped back into her role of President with ease, and the planet seemed to be running smoothly enough, all things considered. Her first order had been to track down all the weapons that had been taken from the Time Vaults and the Omega Arsenal and put them back where they came from – they were no longer at war, so what was the point of using them? After that it had been to start repairing the cities, and she had made a planetwide announcement when they had gotten their broadcasting systems up and working.

_Rassilon is dead_, she had told them. _Gallifrey is safe, and not through his deeds. He died in an attempt to sacrifice the planet, an attempt to destroy himself and take them all with him. The planet is now in lockdown, because now, more than ever, they had to stand together. Gallifrey __**stands.**_

Nobody questioned her after that. It wasn't _quite _the truth, but she could hardly explain was actually happened to them without inciting a riot. She was the one to make the announcement, and the population associated her face with their salvation.

"Apology accepted, General," Romana replied calmly. "What news do you bring?"

"The High Council still isn't happy with your decision to disband them," the General said, still in a military-style 'at ease' position, "but they haven't been causing too much trouble. "Overall, people are pleased with what you are doing. There only seems to be one problem, ma'am, it..."

She raised a thin eyebrow as he trailed off, hesitating. "Well?"

"It's just... the planet is supposed to be in lockdown, and yet you, and I, and the High Command, we all know that we aren't even in the same _universe_. The planet's defenses can cover for the lack of sky, but people will start asking questions eventually... And then there's the call to rebuild! No matter how we spin the story, there isn't any way that we can obtain the resources! The Doctor... he said we would have hope, and that's so much more than we've had in a long time, but we're stranded here."

Romana let out a long breath and tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. Technically speaking, it was more of a throne, but she didn't like those implications.

The General did, unfortunately, have a very good point, and something had to be done about it.

"Melt down all of the scrap metal that you can find," she finally said after a moment's deliberation. "Dalekanium from their crashed ships, any of Gallifrey's natural ores, the destroyed buildings, I don't care. Melt it all down. Cancel the mass-production of weapons, we don't need those anymore, ground all of the battle TARDISes save the bare minimum required for defense. We've got energy there, we might as well harness it for power until we come up with other means. Pull up the old terraforming dataprints, see if our scientists will be able to get a decent ecosystem that can survive with little to no lighting."

The General nodded sharply. "Anything else, my Lady President?"

"Start scouting for any stray Daleks," she continued by way of an answer. "Some might have been left on the planet when it was moved, and if any of them come near the larger population clusters it's going to be a massacre. I want any supplies we'll need built out of that scrap, parts for machines, walls for the city. Make rebuilding a priority."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Dismissed, General. I have a visit to make. See to those things immediately."

* * *

The trip to the medical wing of the building didn't take long, and Romana had found that walking at a brisk pace suited her rather well in this regeneration.

The two shamed had stood vigil for the majority of the time that the patient had been unconscious, although the man, who went by the name of Andrynn, had left to find his family when he had woken up. Imala, the elderly woman, was the only one left, refusing to leave his bedside and simply watching over him with infinite patience.

"My Lord Master," Romana greeted softly when she got there. "My Lady Imala."

"My Lady President," Imala murmured.

The Master was curled into as tight a ball as he could manage, knees drawn up to his chest and hands laced through his red hair, elbows pressed up against his sides. He was lying with his back to the both of them, and the only reason Romana could tell he was alive was the slightly tremble that ran through him occasionally.

"Has there been any change?"

Imala shook her head. "He's been like this all day. Hardly said a word since he regenerated."

"But that was days ago!" She shook her head, watching the insane Time Lord with a scrutinizing gaze. "Has anything changed?"

"The Nurse said that he's fine, physically in near-perfect condition. Mentally, she says, it's impossible to tell. He's locked himself in his mind, burying himself so deep that no one seems to be able to reach him. And it's simple courtesy not to enter a person's mind without permission... nobody knows what state he is in."

"Has he eaten anything? Spoken? Has he even moved?"

"There was some broth, but I don't believe he had any." Imala motioned towards an untouched bowl on the table next to them. "He keeps muttering about the silence, so I've been talking to him. I think it helps."

Romana sighed. "I'll call in our best physicians when they return. Everyone's out trying to help the population get back up onto their feet, and although it pains me to say it, I must turn my gaze to them before focusing on any one man."

"I understand, Lady President, and I thank you for your kindness." The elderly woman looked as though, had Romana been anyone else, that she might have reached over to pat her cheek like a grandmother would to their youngest grandchild.

"No, thank you, Imala. I am grateful for your care for him."

If anything, she was grateful Imala's watchful eye was preventing the Master from killing them all in their sleep, but she didn't say that.

She left, and Imala looked back at the prone figure.

"Oh, there's only one kind of doctor that could help you now," the old woman said quietly. "But he's far, far away..."

* * *

Tianna was half a mile out when she came face to face with a Dalek.

Her eyes widened, her hearts seemed to skip a beat, and before she could even think about it she had swung the rifle up over her shoulder and let out a shot. It echoed across the grassy fields and hit the back of the casing with a resounding _clang_. A moment later she cringed and skittered backwards. It was facing away from her, it might not have even _noticed _her until she shot it.

But aside from skidding forwards a little bit at the impact, the Dalek didn't move. There was a large scorch mark across the back of it, and she swallowed nervously. Evidently, the the rifle wouldn't be quite as useful as it was supposed to be against Daleks.

After nearly a minute of silence in which she was too scared to move and the Dalek didn't seem inclined to do anything, she took a hesitant step forwards. It didn't move. She took another step. Then another, and another, and another, and she was close enough to touch it.

Biting her lip, reached out to grab the Dalek's eyestalk and swing it around towards her.

It didn't resist, and when she saw the blue light that normally glowed out from the eyestalk was absent, she could have cried with relief.

"You don't work," she murmured. "You're dead. Not in very good condition either, all these... these things, they're falling off." She nudged one of the rusted golden orbs on the ground that would normally be attached to the Dalek's armor with the toe of her boot.

She glanced around. She still had time to get back, it wasn't too horribly late. Maybe if she could just get inside this thing, see how it worked... those Dalek weapons were stronger than anything she had, and they never left a mark.

"There must be some way to get out of this." Tianna continued talking to herself, still in the same quiet murmur like she was afraid that if she spoke too loudly it would spring to life. "Some sort of a seam...?" She ran her fingers around the edge of the top dome, stopping when she met a crack and tried to wedge it apart. It briefly occurred to her that it shouldn't be so easy to take apart a Dalek, but this one was probably old. It didn't look like it was in very good shape and clearly she wasn't the first one to have shot it.

With a screeching groan the metal finally gave way, and she tossed the dome to one side. Unfortunately, the weapons seemed to be fused directly to the inside of the Dalek, and between the grating and the wires, she wouldn't know where to start. There was, however, a corpse inside.

Dalek's looked rather like squids, she decided. Back when Gallifrey still had decent amounts of water on it, they had fish and squids and all sorts of water creatures. She didn't remember those times, she wasn't even alive, but she'd seen pictures and listened to the stories that the matrons told back at the shelter, listened to their tales about Gallifrey's golden days...

She needed to get back to Iota and Viram.

ooo

"Tianna!"

Iota looked up and smiled. She was sitting in the back corner of their den, near the fire, Viram asleep on her lap. Tianna returned the smile with a nod and a slight wave, crossing the cavern with long strides and swinging her bag off of her shoulder as she sat down.

"Did you get any food?" the young Gallifreyan asked excitedly.

"Three birds and a squid," she told her. "Like the kind the matrons used to tell us about. I found it on the side of the river. You and Viram can split the birds between you, how does that sound?"

A small frown crossed over the young girl's face. "But won't you have enough food if we take the birds?"

"I'll have plenty of food, Iota," Tianna assured her. "Promise. What's important is that you're getting enough to eat, we need to keep up our strength until we can get back to one of the cities. They have shelters there."

"Okay. Viram! Viram, wake up! We have food!"


	3. Chapter 3

Imala hadn't left the Master's side since Rassilon had tried to drag them out of the Time Lock and destroy the universe. It was an odd combination between a sense of obligation and some insane idea of hope that had started to grow nestled between her hearts, and the two were so mixed together she wasn't sure which one was which anymore. It didn't really matter that much, she supposed, she was there either way.

She knew the Daleks. She knew what war could do to a person and she saw insanity in Rassilon's eyes. What better were they than the Daleks if they were willing to destroy everything for their own gain?

Imala hadn't left the Master's side since he had sacrificed himself to what he knew would be a slow, torturous death at the hands of Rassilon, since he died to save her little boy.

Well. Not so little anymore, she supposed. She was old, now, far too old. She was old enough she remembered the President as an infant, but yet it seemed like yesterday that her little boy was running through the fields of grass on their estate, the red hills that rolled up to meet burnt orange skies, and collapsing underneath the shade of silver trees and laughing as a breeze sent leaves twisting and tumbling through the air.

Her Theta, her _son_... They had been such a wealthy family, back in the day, they never had a thing to worry about. She came from a set of rich parents who had the strong belief that she should never have to work a day in her life, and wanted her to marry someone who would support her. She'd managed that easily enough, and she _did _love her husband for more than his money, but he was a laid-back sort of person and she wound up going into politics while he had stayed at home. And then, when her dear husband had died, when Theta was still just a child, he'd left all of his money to her.

Koschei was a good boy, with a very similar family and very similar upbringing, although his parents were both alive, and she considered them to be significantly more distant to their son. It wasn't her place to comment, nor was it her place to pry, and she never did.

Her Theta had been a very quiet boy around people, much more interested in his books than anything else, and he was constantly finding increasingly stranger and out of the way places to read. From what she had gathered, Koschei was much the same, yet more solemn. And when her Theta had gone off to the Academy, she hadn't heard very much from him until he came flying home after the term was up for that year, practically begging if his new friend could come and visit sometime please?

She'd watched those two boys grow up, she'd raised both of them. She'd listened to them regaling her with stories of how they'd take their TARDISes when they finally got them, and got their licenses, and fly off to see the universe together. She'd kept a careful eye on them as they ran through the fields. She remembered as they grew up, and they caused more and more mischief together, and she remembered the horrible times when they wouldn't speak to each other for days on end. They always found time to apologize without quite apologizing in the only way that young boys knew how, but the parts in between were miserable for them both. She remembered when the Master had finally snapped (and he had refused to go by his childhood nickname for quite some time now) and fled the planet, and her Theta (or perhaps it was her Doctor, now?) hadn't left his room for a month.

She remembered when her Theta had settled down, something she'd thought would never happen with all of the gallivanting about that he did, and he'd gotten married and had children, and his children had children, and he turned into a respectable gentleman with an elderly face that quite commanded respect. She had grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and there was a great-great-grandchild on the way from the youngest grandchild. They had a lovely family.

And then he'd taken his granddaughter Arkytior and flown away in a stolen TARDIS – not even his own one, a stolen, faulty TARDIS from the repair chambers, and she'd never seen her son or her great-granddaughter again. Not for hundreds and hundred of years, not all through the war, not until that fateful day that Gallifrey had been ripped from its place in the sky and taken to Earth.

_Get out of the way_.

Perhaps it was a mother's ignorance, but she preferred to think it was a mother's _intuition_. Five words, and she couldn't help but think that her boys were still alive somewhere, just buried.

"Do eat, Koschei," she implored of the shivering man on the bed, taking the bowl into her hands. "Please, won't you eat?"

There was a very long pause, and she was starting to worry that he might never willingly speak again, but then his fingers seemed to loosen from their death grip over his ears and he shifted slightly. She could almost pretend that he was peering through his hands to look at her.

"It's not my name," he finally rasped. "Don't call me that. It isn't my name."

"It isn't?" Imala set the bowl to one side and leaned forward to touch his shoulder, but he flinched away. It broke her hearts, but she folded her hands neatly together in her lap and didn't move them from that spot. "Tell me then, my dear boy, what is your name?"

Another long pause, but the Master didn't answer this time. However, when hours had passed and the lights inside dimmed and neither of them had gone to sleep, she placed a hand on his shoulder and he didn't pull himself away.

* * *

There was more food, now. They weren't as hungry.

Shuttles of some sort had gone overhead the other day, and they'd spread a strange sort of gas across the entire planet. The next day, the wilting shoots of grass that had been miserably crawling upwards toward the nonexistent sun seemed a little bit brighter. Iota had decided almost instantly, the moment the engines had woken them up, that it was people from the Citadel trying to make the planet better, and Tianna was inclined to agree with her. They'd been woken up a few mornings later by birdsong, something so unfamiliar they were originally convinced that it was an attack.

They were by no means as hungry as they used to be. The river almost came up to Tianna's knees, now. Off in the distance, she could see more shuttles and distant blurs starting to repair the dome around the Citadel. Even from where they were, miles away, the gaping hole in the side was visible, and the smoke had poured into the sky for weeks on end. Maybe they'd start clearing the wreckage away soon.

Viram all but jumped onto her shoulders, smiling for the first time in a long time and Iota followed shortly after. The three laughed for a moment, Tianna trying to balance herself so she didn't send them all tumbling to the floor.

They weren't as hungry now. There was more food, there was more water. Maybe they would be able to get back to the city soon.

* * *

"My Lady President."

"My Lord General, my Lord Androgar."

"You requested to see the footage of how the Doctors brought us here?" Androgar questioned, knowing the answer fully well but asking merely as a matter of principle. "We've collected as much of it as we can, although the quality is rather grainy due to the Daleks attacking."

"An understandable reason," Romana replied, a faint smile playing on her lips. The General reached over to flip a couple of switches on a newly repaired panel. They were in the War Room, which had been reinforced yet again so the whole Citadel didn't come crashing down on top of it.

"As far as we can tell, they managed to use the stasis cubes to place us in a pocket universe," he explained, watching the holograms fly into existence. "It's never been done before, it's bordering on impossible for our scientists to even begin to understand the theory behind it."

They watched in silence after that, Romana keeping a blank expression. She saw the first three Doctors show up, two faces she didn't recognize and the one she helped into the Omega Arsenal. She watched them cheerfully announce their hastily cobbled together plan and laugh when the rest of them started showing up.

Oh heavens. All thirteen of them, indeed.

"A parallel pocket universe," she repeated. "Theory or not, am I correct in my assumptions that it would be impossible for us to break out of this supposed pocket universe on our own? To return, we would need someone from our original universe to... unlock the doors, so to speak, and then it would be something of a combined effort to pull us through?"

The General nodded. "That is our understanding on the matter, yes."

"The Doctor will save us," Androgar put in bravely. "He put us here, he can get us out."

"Then why hasn't he done so already?" the General countered, fully prepared to debate the point with his younger assistant.

"_Gentlemen._" Romana glared the two into silence. "Now isn't the time for analyzing the Doctor's capability of doing what ought to be impossible."

"My apologies, Lady President."

They both mumbled out the response, and she nodded. "Accepted. And I thank you for showing me this. Have the economists drawn up plans for how long we should prepare to be in isolation?"

"I believe they are nearing completion."

"See to it that I have a copy of the dataprints within the day."

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

**Notes: The Woman in White (from The End of Time Pt 1 and 2) was revealed to have been the Doctor's mother by Russel T. Davies in an interview. Theta and Koschei seemed to be the officially unofficial nicknames for the Doctor and the Master in the DW universe, although I'm pretty sure they have some basis in canon, and it's my own personal belief that those two were friends back when they were kiddies. Everything else is just pure speculation.**

**Next couple chapters are where it starts to get interesting, and we actually have the Doctor making an appearance for more than a few paragraphs. He's running from angry aliens, so not much has changed on that particular front. Next chapter will also be longer, and hopefully things will start picking up. As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!**


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a daunting task when the Doctor had finally gone to scour his library for information on pocket universes. Oh, he certainly understood the theories and the work behind it, but the majority of information about Gallifrey had been destroyed in the war considering that all the information about Gallifrey was _on _Gallifrey, and what information he had was few and far between.

To begin with, there were the rows and rows and rows of bookshelves that made up the TARDIS library. He had a copy of almost every single book written in Earth history, thousands from other planets, the _Encyclopedia Gallifreya _and then the book he himself had written – _The History of the Time War. _That was just in the library he knew about, there were thousands of other books floating around in odd places. He found a book about cake decorating in one of the bathrooms the other day.

He should probably rewrite that when he got the opportunity. _The History of the Time War_, well, the Time War wasn't over yet, and now the information he had wasn't even accurate. Gallifrey had never fallen. He could call it a book-in-progress! When he found Gallifrey he'd need to put that in there, too, to explain what happened after the war. That sounded like fun. A book-in-progress. He could be an official author some day, how _cool _was that!

Adjusting his bowtie, he nearly bounced through the room, tugging books off of shelves at random and setting them down on one of the tables scattered about. Once several piles of books, that were at least a few feet tall each, had accumulated, he sat down in a chair, pulled out his reading glasses, and started to pour through the words like he had never read a book before in his life. There was so much information- and, oh, he had all the time in the world, and he was fairly sure that the euphoria would die down within a couple decades or so, but he couldn't just _not _look. What else could one expect him to do?

And it became clear that his own library wasn't enough, even as he wound up with two more books of his own notes, and he was bounding off towards the console room, letting out a whoop of laughter when he saw coordinates already inputted into the screen.

* * *

He went to several backwater planets where information was the sole source of trade. He paid a visit to Dorian's head down in the catacombs, he flew off to Earth in the far future and hacked into their databanks – he was fairly sure one of his incarnations might have gotten banned during that century, so best lay low for now, yeah?

He went to talk with the Shadowers of the Schism, a race well-known for ridiculous prophecies, but they could accurately predict the future and provide information, for a price. He dug out an old crystal ball he'd gotten from them in the future and traded it for quite a bit of useful knowledge. They'd probably give it back to him in a couple centuries for them, a couple decades ago for him.

He went to the Library, which hurt more than he'd had thought it would have, but he could focus on the good right now and it eased the heartsache just a little bit. It was a planetwide booksource, surely _they _had some information they could use. And they did, they certainly did, and the Nodes stationed around were more than helpful, so he checked out a few dozen more books and lugged them back to the TARDIS and poured over those just like he had done with the mounds of books stacked around him.

He fancied to think that if Clara had been on board, and she had walked into the TARDIS library right then, she would have only seen a book fort on one of the tables and bypassed him entirely, he was nearly buried in all the paper.

He couldn't really bring himself to care.

And finally, he went to go and visit some people that knew a good deal about planets gone missing.

* * *

The Shadow Proclamation was not happy to see the Doctor. They never were, but this probably had something to do with the last time they had met, and he had defied a direct order from the Architect. That kind of put him on their bad side.

The moment he had stepped through the TARDIS doors he found himself face to face with a platoon of Judoon all aiming their guns at his face.

"Right!" he said brightly, smiling and shutting the door behind him with a snap of his fingers, making sure his hands stayed above his head and in sight at all times. "I don't suppose you'll be taking me to see the Architect, will you?"

They grunted and motioned for him to walk.

His smile never dimmed. "Oh, well, I suppose I had to ask."

They took him to a small room, and he _did _get to see the Architect eventually, although technically it was more _her _coming to see _him_ and not vice-versa. She glared at him with piercing red eyes, and he smiled, waving a cuffed hand.

"Hello!" He jangled the handcuffs pointedly. "Do you mind letting me out of these? This regeneration has rather sensitive skin. Also, I've asked for a cup of tea, but nobody's brought me anything."

"You're hardly in a position to be making demands," the Architect responded coldly, glaring down at him with blank indifference bordering on anger.

"Ah, but I am!" He smiled, leaning forwards and lowering his tone of voice so she had to lean forwards as well to hear what he was saying. "I've got wonderful news," he whispered in a sing-song tone of voice. "You won't believe it when I tell you."

"Doctor, you are facing charges, this is hardly the time to be making jokes-"

"I broke through the lock surrounding the Time War." He cut her off, still smiling and whispering in that sing-song voice, a smiling playing on his lips. "Thirteen of me, if I'm being specific, but they're still all me, and I am them, so really it's just me. I broke into the Time War, and Gallifrey is saved. Considering I've prevented the extinction of a Level Nine species, I believe I have some leeway here."

The Architect reeled backwards in shock, but he spoke before she could begin to gather her thoughts, holding up his shackled hands once again. "Now! Why don't you uncuff me, and we can happily exchange information about pocket universes. Also, terribly sorry about the last time we met, but you know me. Hardly one to walk into battle nowadays, this soldier's seen his last war and isn't going back. Brought the planets back, so really, you can hardly yell at me."

The Architect had turned a strange color, and she didn't seem to be able to speak past the odd choking noise every now and again, but she made a jerking motion with her hand, and a Judoon came in to unlock the Doctor's handcuffs.

"That's more like it!" he said cheerfully when the Judoon had left. "Now, let's get started!"

* * *

Perpetual twilight.

Romana decided she liked how the term applied to their situation, and had resolved to keep it. For Gallifrey was saved, yes, but they had no sun. Wherever they were, there was light shining through the cosmos, and somehow they weren't freezing to death despite the planet slowly cooling off, and according to the scans that had been run they were still rotating properly.

The shelters were the first thing, the first priority when it came to rebuilding. Individual buildings would come later, right now they needed shelters so the population had somewhere to sleep at night. They needed a bed to sleep in and a fire to keep them warm and food to eat.

The terraforming was coming along very slowly, although they had sent shuttles out with what basics they had managed to come up with. It had been so long since times of peace, even the scientists' minds were hardwired to war and had all but forgotten how to create something that wasn't a killing machine.

They hadn't gotten around to clearing out the wreckage, but that was next. Some people had fled from the cities to the wastelands in the first attacks, and now they were blocked by miles and miles of crashed Dalek ships and battle TARDISes alike. Many had no way to travel across the continent to begin with. They couldn't even know if it was safe to come back.

Perpetual twilight.

Then again, darkness had to come before the dawn.

* * *

Tianna wasn't feeling particularly good.

She hadn't mentioned it to Iota or Viram, although she was pretty sure they had picked up on it by now. They knew each other so well it was easy to notice when something was off. But she didn't point it out, if only in the vain hopes that they hadn't noticed anything and would be spared a little bit of worry. They already had enough to worry about, like where their next meal was going to come from.

It seemed that after the Daleks had all left, both food and water were slowly coming back into abundance, and with a little bit of luck she might be able to pull in double the amounts of food for them all. Just the day after she had only brought back a single bird (although admittedly larger than the ones she had been catching before) she brought in four of the same size, and they combined those and their leftovers to make a stew. The water was flowing through the rivers so it might actually be called a river now and she saw bits of red grass poking up through the blackened soil.

As the days went on, she brought more and more food back until there were times when she didn't need to hunt because of their leftovers from the day before. However, as the days went on, she felt progressively worse. Her tongue turned to leather in her mouth, her head was pounding, her eyes were gritty and eventually she was lucky to hit the broad side of a TARDIS when she was inches away.

It was getting rather difficult to make the mile long walk to the nearest river and back again. Sometimes she found herself curled up on the ground by a tree or in the middle of a field, stomach trying to twist itself into knots, and having no recollection of stopping to take a break.

"...anna... Tianna? ...Tianna?"

"Hm?"

She blinked a couple times and peered up at the two Iotas standing next to her. They doubled into three before shifting back into one again.

"Tianna, Viram and I want to go for a walk. Can we please? There's nothing outside, you've said so yourself, and we won't go very far, just a little bit outside the opening. You haven't been feeling good so I didn't want to bother you but I promise you don't need to worry and we won't go far." The toddler clung to the hem of Iota's dress, sucking on his thumb. They had a point, she didn't normally let them leave the den very often for fear of the Daleks finding them, but she wanted some quiet... and if they didn't go far...

"Okay," she told them, forcing her voice into something approximating its normal tone. "Okay, go ahead. Just keep the mouth of the cave in sight, okay?"

They happily jabbered out their thanks, sending spikes of pain through her aching head, and she pulled the tattered cloak off of her shoulders to act as a pillow for now. She just wanted to _sleep_...

* * *

**So, the Doctor's back, as promised. We aren't going to be hearing from the Master for a few more chapters, but then he starts to be more of a main focus. We won't get much from Romana, either, but they're all slowly crawling towards each other.**

**Also, since I forgot to mention it before - credit to "The Wild Wild Whovian" for coming up with Imala's name. You should go read her Doctor Who stuff, it's really awesome.**


	5. Chapter 5

The General had only met the Doctor a couple of times, actually. He had been there when they had banished him from Gallifrey officially, the renegade Time Lord in his second incarnation and the General himself only in his first, still a young military officer with high hopes for the future. He'd been there when they had dragged the Time Lord back and charged him with breaking the First Law of Time. He distinctly remembered wondering why they had never charged him earlier – everybody _knew _that he had been going off and interfering with things for hundreds of years now but they hadn't done anything before then.

The Valeyard had seemed a bit suspicious, and then the entire thing had turned on its head sideways, with the Master and _humans _running amok on their planet... Time Lords didn't get migraines, and he had a migraine after all that.

There was a very brief message to the man's eighth incarnation that he had conveyed, that the High Council wanted him to return home to fight in the war. The Doctor had refused, leaving them annoyed, but it had been assumed that they would be fine without his help.

And then there was that fateful last day of the Time War. All thirteen.

And heavens above, that man could be completely insane, utterly mad, but he was _brilliant _and he had _saved _them.

* * *

Romana had been called on directly by the White Guardian to help the Doctor, and when that task was said and done with she had found that she hadn't really wanted to leave. Of course, she still considered the man to be an idiot, and he'd failed his driving test multiple times. In fact, she was fairly sure that he had never successfully managed to pass most of his exams on the first try.

And even then she had started to warm to him. He wasn't intelligent in the conventional sense, but thought on a whim. He had experience, something which the Time Lords back home had so very little of, for all of their wisdom. They sat inside their glass domes day in and day out and did they ever _do _anything? They sat and they watched and they wasted away until the outside of their gilded cage was as shining as ever but past that it was rotten through to the core.

The Doctor was a good teacher, she had decided sometime during her first regeneration. In his travels he had learned far more interesting things than what she had ever been taught, and that sense of _excitement_, how could she ever bring herself to leave?

Leave she did, however, when the Time Lords had called her back and she had refused to go. Why would she want to go back. It was horrific there, she could see that now. Beautiful to look at, and yes, it was always home, but she couldn't go back to the same dull routine and the never-ending monotony of their endless observations.

She'd returned at news of the war. Perfect or no, it was home, and she would protect it until her dying breath.

She could credit the Doctor for having survived this far, and not only because he was the one that had saved them all. Without him she wouldn't have lasted long. Without him, she would be an entirely different person. But he had inspired her, he told her he could be something _more _than what the Time Lords had planned out for her, that she could _grow_, do things far above and beyond their mediocre expectations. He was the reason she ran for President, he was the reason that she had pushed for sanity and logic in the midst of their war-torn madness and he was the reason she had refused to give up when Rassilon had ripped everything away from her.

Romana looked out at the dim, dark, orange void above them and watched as more shuttles shot past overhead out towards the wilderness. Maybe she could get them to deconstruct the dome around the Citadel, claiming the jagged fragments around it were a hazard or something similar. She rather liked it more open, and it might just be time for Gallifrey to start changing.

"Thank you, old friend," she murmured up at the starless sky. "Wherever you are, I thank you."

* * *

Iota chewed on her lip as she sat next to Tianna, running her fingers through her friend's tangled hair. Viram had been asking why she wasn't waking up, but Iota didn't have an answer for him. She was sick, that was all. She was very sick, but Iota couldn't do anything about it. Her skin was warm and clammy and sometimes she thrashed about while she was sleeping. Now Iota had to go and get water, but she had to leave Viram behind to make sure someone was there if Tianna woke up and it worried her. Viram couldn't protect himself, and Tianna couldn't do anything right now, so she always ran as fast as she could to the river and back.

Shuttles would fly overhead outside, and hours later, once they had gone to bed and woken back up, they would venture outside and the grass would seem a little bit fresher and the earth bearing a little bit less of a resemblance to death. Viram would toddle around and play in the dirt, drawing circles with the spare twig here and there.

Iota took Tianna's rifle once their food supply started running low and went to see if she could shoot anything. They were hungry. They needed something to eat.

The trees weren't starting to leaf out by any means, but there were a few shoots poking up from the ground here and there among the grasses. The trunks of the older trees were black and scorched and dead, broken branches clawing up at the sky. She didn't think she'd find anything in those, so she started heading towards the river. Everything needed water. She considered herself exceptionally lucky when she got there and saw several birds hopping around the riverbank. It was like a feast.

Luck fled shortly after, along with most of the birds. Wild aim had managed to strike down two, but that was more fluke than anything. On top of that the rifle seemed to be slowly losing power, and it wouldn't be much use for very long.

Iota picked up the two birds and carried them in one hand, the rifle dragging along on the ground behind her as she held it in the hand opposite. She turned her gaze to the Citadel, far away in the distance.

She could just barely see scaffolding around the edges of it, and sometimes at night she fancied she could hear the distant sound of machinery pulling wreckage out of the way. Soon they might be able to go back. The cracked dome no longer had smoke pouring from it like it had in days gone past, and the frequent random bursts of fire left from crashed wreckage and dry forests had finally died down so that the air was clearer than it had been in a very long while.

Viram looked up with wide eyes as she walked in, but he never spoke. It was rare to get a word out of him, but his expressions conveyed enough. He was hungry. She was hungry too, they were all just hungry.

"I got two birds," she murmured. "That should be enough for today, I guess. You want to start up the fire?"

He toddled over to their makeshift firepit, glancing at Tianna occasionally, who still remained unresponsive in her fitful sleep.

Soon they could get home. Very soon. They had to go home.

* * *

Okay, so maybe his visit to the Shadow Proclamation hadn't gone _quite _as expected. Even after talking them out of charging him with obstruction of justice he had managed to wind up fleeing through the hallways, all the information that he needed having been downloaded onto his sonic and some parts of the Proclamation's archives destroyed. It hadn't been _his _fault, how was he supposed to have known that the software wouldn't have been compatible?

At any rate, there were half a dozen Judoon firing at him as he ran, and to an outsider he probably looked insane as he laughed outright. Just like old times!

Except it really was old times. He had Gallifrey back, and with this he could finally start looking for it.

Skidding around the corner, his brown boots leaving scuff marks on the polished floors (and he would be worried about them being even more angry for that if it wasn't for the Judoon leaving smoldering holes every few feet as their aim got increasingly worse), he snapped his fingers as he ran. Ahead of him, the TARDIS doors flew open and he dove inside. The Judoon bellowed angrily, and then the console room shook as the doors slammed shut just in time to block more blasts from their weapons.

"Oi!" he shouted angrily to the doors. "Don't you hurt my ship!"

To be fair, he had accidentally destroyed parts of their archives.

Although that wasn't really _fair_. The TARDIS was much more important than some dusty old archive floating on a space station!

The room continued to shake in spite of his irate demands, and the Doctor rolled his eyes, climbing to his feet and ignoring it entirely. He plugged the sonic into a small port by the monitor hanging down from the console and watched the data stream past to join with the other information that he had transcribed and uploaded.

"Come on, old girl," he murmured, patting the side of the screen. "Talk to me."

The Architect started screaming at him from outside the ship. He ignored her too, she could go elsewhere. He had a planet to find.

The screen dinged, flashed a couple of times, and then all the information came up together, and he scrolled through, somehow managing to frown and chuckle at the same time.

"Well," he murmured. "Well, well, well. I am _brilliant_. I am most certainly brilliant, because that's so amazing I don't even understand it myself. Universal theory, I was never good in that class!" He chuckled wryly, shaking his head. "Ah. It doesn't make sense, I _love _it!"

The engines began to slowly creak and grind as they started up, and the shooting of the Judoon and the screaming of the Architect faded away in wake of the glorious noise of the TARDIS. The time rotor in the center bobbed up and down, and a long-distant memory seemed to slowly surface.

_That sound brings hope wherever it goes. To anyone who hears it, Doctor. Anyone, however lost..._

* * *

**Figured we could end the chapter on a happier note. As always, I hope you enjoyed reading, and feedback is always welcome!**


	6. Chapter 6

Iota knelt down on the floor of their makeshift home so she was eye to eye with Viram. The toddler looked back at her solemnly.

"You stay here," she told him. "You gotta watch Tianna while I'm gone, okay?"

He nodded mutely, patting her cheek with a grimy hand. She tousled his hair before standing back up and heaving the rifle over her shoulder. It was a miracle she could even carry it – the weapon was almost as long as she was tall.

Really, there wasn't much she could even do. They needed food, but the rifle had finally fizzled out and died a few days ago so they had no way to catch anything. Vegetation was almost entirely non-existent despite the slow return of the grass and they would starve if she didn't try.

Scurrying out into the dim outdoors, she made a beeline for the remnants woods and tried not to think about how much brighter it was back by their fire. Out here it was dark, and the sky above her was like nothing she had ever seen. It was too still, too quiet, it was endless and empty and vast and it terrified her. She was so hungry.

The trees seemed to mock her. Every shadow was a Dalek, every crackle of the twigs underfoot and every faint rustle of the wind was something right behind her shoulder. The rifle in her hands was useless, even if she could aim to begin with, and by the time the den disappeared from sight behind her she was shaking like a leaf. She tried not to think of Viram, alone by the fire, tried not to think of how far away she was from anything resembling help.

And three things seemed to happen at once.

Off in the distance, a bird let out a loud caw that had her nearly jumping out of her skin. At the same time, she stepped on a stick that broke with a _crack_ and she would probably need to pull splinters out of her foot later, and what could only be described as a feral roar seemed to echo all around her.

She screamed and gripped the rifle tightly in both her hands, looking around frantically. Her breathing came in shallow gasps and she couldn't find the source of the noise- what was it, where was it? The roar sounded again, and she was stunned into mute silence, struck dumb in her terror. There was a blue box slowly materializing on the opposite side of the clearing.

That was where the roar was coming from, it sounded in time as the box faded in and faded out of existence. Iota stumbled backwards until she was next to a tree at the opposite side of the open space, ready to bolt at a second's notice and grab Viram and Tianna and run. Fear clawed its way up her throat.

The box landed with a thud. There were squiggles written around the top, and on a square white panel and a round panel on the front. The windows, the entire box seemed to glow, emanating light, and it scared her. What if the Daleks were back-? But they _couldn't _be, they were gone, they were _gone_, Tianna had said so- and the doors were opening, and she shrieked, bringing the rifle to bear, forgetting for a moment that he provided her less protection than the tree next to her.

The man in the doorway of the box froze in midstep and held up his hands, quickly saying something in a language that she didn't recognize.

Sucking in a deep breath, Iota adjusted her grip on the rifle.

The man didn't _look _Dalek, but the Daleks had puppets and you never knew they weren't actual people until the programming broke. He had a strap of fabric tied around his neck and a purple coat and pants that didn't quite reach his ankles, and the attire was a far cry from the red Gallifreyan robes that were so common among the population.

But the man's face seemed to shift slightly, softening into a warmer expression.

"It's okay," he murmured soothingly. He spoke Gallifreyan, and she could understand what he was saying now. "It's okay, don't shoot. My name's the Doctor, I'm a Time Lord. Like- like you."

She shifted slightly, not moving from her spot opposite him. "You're... you aren't... you're... not Dalek?"

Iota could have almost expected him to be offended, but he just shook his head. "No. No, never."

And it was most likely sheer desperation and exhaustion from hunger that caused her to drop the rifle right then and there and all but run over to him, clutching at the hem of his long coat in her hands.

"No, but please, sir-" she begged, stammering as she spoke too quickly. "Our friend- she's sick, we don't- please, sir-"

"Breathe!" The man gently removed her hands from his jacket, kneeling down in a way similar to her interactions with Viram just a few hours ago so they were eye level with one another. "Just breathe, it's okay. Can you tell me your name, child?"

"Iota," she told him rapidly. "And my friend is Tianna, and Viram is with her, and please, sir, we can't get back to the city, it's too far, it's just us-"

"Iota." The man interrupted her, but his voice never left that same, gentle tone. "Iota, I can help. Take me to them.

* * *

The Doctor had intended to land somewhere inside either Arcadia or the Citadel, preferably where his TARDIS wouldn't attract too much attention and then make his way to pay a visit to the High Command from there. He was intending to deal with Rassilon, should the occasion call for it, and intended to deal with all the other madmen that had taken the reins during the last days of the war. He intended to have to deal with the Master at some point. He wasn't really expecting that much of a warm welcome, considering the interactions he'd had with Time Lords in the past. They'd never cared much for him, he'd never cared much for them.

To be fair, he _had _just saved the planet, so they probably owed him a little bit of leeway, but he'd prefer to stay on their good side for now.

The Doctor hadn't intended to be held at gunpoint, and certainly not held at gunpoint by such a scrap of a girl. Of course, he never did intend to be held at gunpoint, yet he always seemed to manage one way or another...

She was tiny, looking the human equivalent of five or six, covered in soot and dirt, wide brown eyes peering out from a gaunt face.

"Don't shoot!"

And there really was a problem when that was starting to become instinct to say.

The girl just continued shaking like a leaf in the wind, and she didn't seem to understand.

A young Gallifreyan in the Time War. Most likely never seen into the Untempered Schism, almost certainly hadn't been taught anything beyond the basics of Gallifreyan phrases, and if she was out here, an orphan who had no parents to pass their knowledge down to her. Who would bother to teacher a child English in the middle of a war.

"It's okay," he said, the Gallifreyan feeling wrong on his tongue. Had he even bothered to speak his native language in this regeneration?

And as soon as the girl had been assured that he wasn't with the Daleks, she was practically on her knees, clutching at his jacket and begging him to help her. Her hands were tiny, hardly wider than two of his fingers together.

"No, but please, sir," she begged, looking up at him. "Our friend- she's sick- we don't- please, sir-"

"Breathe!" His hearts ached at the wretched sight. "Just breathe, it's okay. Can you tell me your name, child?"

"Iota." She was speaking too quickly, and he could hardly hear her. "And my friend is Tianna, and Viram is with her, and please, sir, we can't get back to the city, it's too far, it's just us-"

The shelters were some of the first things to go in the war, the first things the Daleks attacked. Millions upon millions of families were killed, and millions more children were orphaned. Crowds had flocked out of the city to forge their way in the wilderness, except when the Daleks began planetary bombardment there was really nowhere that was safe.

"Iota, Iota, I can help," he assured her. "Take me to them."

She started pulling him along by the hand, leaving the rifle forgotten in the dirt behind them. They followed a seemingly random pathway, no obvious landmarks to indicate where they were going. He hadn't thought about the state his home would be in, but he saw now. The earth was charred and black, and it took far longer than it should have to realize that they were in a forest. Or, at least, what remained of a forest – the burnt stumps and jagged pieces of wood could hardly be called trees.

"Iota, where are we?" he asked. He had an inkling in the back of his mind, especially since he could see the Citadel far off in the distance, but he didn't want to believe it.

"The Forests of Prosperity," she told him without looking back. "Or what's left of it, I guess."

Even expecting the news, he felt the need to stop and take a moment to sit down. It seemed impossible for this place to be those forests. They weren't even in a forest, there was hardly evidence of a forest ever being here to begin with, and weren't there some distant, long-forgotten memories of a family and children running every which way as they played in the woods on their property?

She kept pulling him along until they were flat-out running across a plain, stopping when they came to what he had originally thought was a crashed ship but was in face scrap metal piled and stacked together to make a temporary hut.

A boy was playing in the dirt, half the size of Iota and wearing cobbled-together rags for clothes. He looked up at them as they rushed forward, standing and toddling over and grasping Iota's other hand, staring at the Doctor with wide eyes full of amazement.

"You... live here?" the Doctor asked weakly.

Iota tugged at his hand, nodded. "Please, sir, she's inside by the fire. You have to help her."

"I'll help her, Iota," he promised, walking inside. The two hesitantly followed. "I'll help her, I promise."

* * *

**The Doctor's back, but he's gotten a bit sidetracked. More familiar faces make an appearance come next chapter, so stay tuned. As always, I hope you enjoyed reading, and feedback is immensely appreciated!**


	7. Chapter 7

It was dark and cramped and smoky inside the shelter. There wasn't any sort of ventilation but for a gap in the ceiling above them, and it didn't appear to be helping them very much. The top dome of a Dalek, eyestalk still attached (although mercifully dark and lifeless), served as a firepit, and already burnt sticks and logs were being used as kindling. Even as his stomach churned at the horrible conditions, the Doctor couldn't help but marvel at their ingenuity.

He didn't even see the girl at first, between taking in everything else and the thin smoke in the air. She was curled up on the opposite side of the fire from them, farthest away from the entrance to the shelter, wrapped in a tattered blanket. Unlike Iota's threadbare dress and Viram's rags, the older girl seemed the best off for clothing. A faded and patched cloak was wrapped around her shoulders, a typical Gallifreyan robe had been taken and ripped to act as a tunic, a coarse rope tied far too tightly around her too-thin waist like a belt. Her pants had been ripped at the knees for better movement and she even had a pair of boots. The soles were peeling off of both of them.

"Can you help her?" Iota sounded very quiet in the silence. "Please, sir, can you help her?"

He smiled at her by way of reply, kneeling down next to Tianna and brushing her hair out of her face. Her dark skin was clammy and warm underneath his hand.

"Oh, you poor dear," he whispered as she shivered, even when curled up underneath a blanket and lying next to a fire. "What happened to you...?"

Quickly, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver to scan her, but he could already tell that he wouldn't be able to help her, not here, in this cave. A glance at the results showed an elevated fever and some sort of infection playing havoc with her body. It could be any number of things... out here, with so little food, their immune systems would be down and they wouldn't be able to fight off diseases as easily. The water might not be safe to drink, whatever animals they had caught might not have been properly cleaned or cooked. If they had even just cut their foot while walking through the remains of a warzone, it could have been disastrous.

"I've got a ship," he said, looking back at Iota and Viram. They hadn't moved from where they were standing and were watching him with worried eyes. "Iota, that box that brought me here, it's my ship. I can use it to take you three back to the city, all of you. You'll be safe there, you'll have a nice place to rest, and there are people that will be able to help Tianna. I can't do anything, not here, but I can take you to people who can."

Iota chewed on her lip. "She'll be okay if you take us there?"

"She'll be fine, and you can all stay even after she gets better. No more living out here in the wilderness."

When the young girl didn't seem convinced, he held out his hand and smiled gently. "It's okay," he assured her. "You can trust me."

* * *

The Doctor had burned the dirty rags that had made up Tianna's blanket and wrapped her in his coat instead, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her as gently as he possibly could. Iota carried Viram, and they had started hurrying back through the woods as quickly as they could manage. He didn't want to waste any more time.

Oh, time. He had all the time in the world!

"What's your name, sir?"

Iota's questioned startled him, and he glanced back at her. "I told you, I'm the Doctor."

The girl shook her head. "No, that's a job," she told him. "And real names are secret, but you have to have a _name_."

He kept walking, although inwardly his brain was reeling. He'd had parents, once, and they never called him "Doctor" because that wasn't his name then. They never called him by his true name, because as she said, those were secret. But what did they...?

"Theta," he said at long last, the TARDIS finally coming into view. "You can call me Theta."

"Okay. Thank you, Mister Theta."

The TARDIS doors opened without any prompting, and the Doctor murmured his thanks to the old ship as he turned to walk sideways through the doors, making sure he didn't knock Tianna's head against anything. The Gallifreyan children didn't bat an eyelash at the bigger-on-the-inside box and for a brief moment he was disappointed in the lack of reaction, and then he could have slapped himself because if the Time Lords had been so inclined to at any point they could have gone ahead and made the entire planet bigger on the inside.

The thought of putting Tianna down on the cold glass floor of the TARDIS console filled him with a feeling of disgust, and he nodded for Iota to come over.

"Pull that lever for me, would you?" he asked, shifting the girl in his arms to input some coordinates. Straight into the meeting room of the High Command, if the old girl cooperated with him. She ought to, this was important.

Iota looked at the wide array of controls, then hefted Viram up in her arms so he was sitting on her shoulders. On her own she was too short to really see past the rim of the console.

Miraculously steady, the time rotor began to grind up and down as the engines creaked and groaned to life, and he smiled at the noise. Iota and Viram watched with wide eyes, the girl looking torn between being terrified at the noise and staring at it in awe.

"It's okay," he told them, twisting to pull another lever. "It's just the engines."

Viram patted Iota's head to get her attention and pointed at the Gallifreyan symbols lining the rotating circles above the console.

"Are those names, Mister Theta?" she asked quietly.

He smiled sadly, the engines signifying their landing with a low _thud_, and he turned to the door.

"Come on, you two," he told them. "We're here."

* * *

Romana had called for a meeting of the High Command and the War Council (which had also been disbanded, but they were technically a part of the High Command and they offered good advice, and with the High Council gone she really needed all the minds she could get) and they had convened together in a large dining hall. It had been used for formal dinner type occasions, back when they had time for those sort of things, and had then been converted into storage, and then forgotten about. Romana had most of it cleared away and decided to use it as an unofficial meeting room until their old ones could be repaired.

Maybe they should just have a single meeting room for their councils, and use the large one for the Senate. There were at least five other meeting rooms that were hardly ever used.

"My Lady President."

She greeted each formality with the proper response, inwardly cringing the entire time. She was beginning to think that the reason that the Time Lords of old never got anything done was due to the simple fact that they spent half of their lives following pointless formalities.

When everyone was seated, she stood, starting to speak. "I have called you all here for the reason that while Gallifrey has been saved, it seems unlikely that we will be leaving any time soon. It has been shown that we cannot leave the planet save for a few hundred miles past the outer atmosphere, and the climate is significantly different than what it has been. We are not known for our ability to adapt." Romana's tone turned wry, and she got a few bitter smiles from around the room. "However, now, we _must _adapt. We must dismiss the ways of old and embrace new ways of life if we are to survive. Even when the planet is found, it will take time to shift an entire planet back to its original position in the stars. We cannot count on a hero in gilded armor to come and rescue us."

Surprisingly, Androgar, the young lad, spoke up. "I agree with your reasoning, my Lady President, and I wish to express a few ideas that I feel would be beneficial to us-"

A gust of air blew through the room, tugging at people's hair and sending a few papers skittering across the table. Romana stiffened, and Androgar's mouth snapped shut with an audible _click_.

A second gust, this one more powerful, and accompanied by the very distant groaning of engines.

"But that's a TARDIS," someone murmured from further down the table. "We ordered all TARDISes grounded after the lockdown."

The groaning grew louder, the speed of the wind continued to increase, and at the opposite end of the room from their long table, they could see the faint outline of a blue box shiver into being. It quickly faded away before coming back in stronger color, repeating the process of materialization until there was a bright blue box standing in front of them.

Someone seemed to lose control of their filters and blurted, "_He _saved us?"

Androgar sat down in shock, staring.

Romana turned and walked around so she was standing behind her chair, facing the doors of the Doctor's TARDIS, waiting for it to open. It had been so long since she had seen the man. Would she recognize him? Would he even recognize _her_? She had helped him into the Omega Arsenal, but it had been done through cryptic messages. The fewer things that could be traced, the better, and that included video transmissions and face-to-face meetings.

The doors creaked open.

The Doctor eased his way out, and she blinked.

"Hello," the renegade Time Lord said softly, looking out at all of the officials sitting at a table, staring back at him with varying degrees of shock. He didn't seem like he could quite believe his eyes. "Sorry for interrupting. I'd love to chat, but the TARDIS landed at the wrong coordinates, wound up in the wilderness... Forests of Prosperity, or what's left of it." He nodded at the child in his arms, glancing briefly down at the two trying to hide behind his legs. "She needs medical attention, and it wouldn't hurt to look at the other two."

"Of course." Romana answered without thinking. Unconventional though it was, they could hardly turn the three away. "Lieutenant, call the medical wing. Doctor, you may follow me. General, you are in charge until I return."

She left no room for argument, and left the Doctor to hurry after her while the Time Lords at the table scurried to follow her orders.

"You said you found them in the wilderness?" she asked as they hurried through the hallways.

He nodded. She could hear his thoughts bubbling just underneath the surface. He was broadcasting, having trouble keeping his thoughts locked down. Depending on how long it had been for him since the war, he could be incredibly out of habit.

"Some sort of infection, could be from any number of things... I'm sorry, I didn't get your name?"

"Everyone keeps calling me their Lady President, although I do wish they'd dispense with the formalities. Perhaps they could call me Fred."

He stumbled in his walked, the younger two almost jogging to keep up with their longer strides staring at her in shock.

"Romana?" he croaked out.

"It's been a while, my dear Doctor," she told him gently. "Later, we must catch up on things. For now we have children to help and a planet to fix."

"Quite right... quite right."

They rushed on in silence.

* * *

**I'm having so much fun writing this I'm debating doing some artwork based off of it. Some once-formal hall, now dusty and unused with some bigger on the inside storage boxes here and there, and a rickety old table with all these stuffy Time Lords dressed in their formal robes and then at the end of it all, the TARDIS...**


	8. Chapter 8

He had gotten to the point where he didn't really know who he was anymore. Not knowing where he was had been rather disorientating but it didn't matter as much, and time was a meaningless concept but the terrifying blankness across his memory had him drawing further in on himself. The silence in his head was overwhelming and leaden weights pressed down on top of his dual hearts and closed down like iron around his lungs and made it impossible to breathe.

If he kept his hands pressed over his ears he could hear a distant thudding as his heartbeat echoed and at the very least it kept the silence at bay. It wasn't much, but it was noise instead of that awful, awful silence.

There was a woman that sat next to him for days on end at a time. She talked to him nonstop at first, although her words held no sense to him. Gradually he began to understand, and the woman's voice blocked out the silence more than the beating of his hearts, and she just sat and talked. He kept getting the strange feeling that she knew him, and the stranger feeling that he knew _her_, but he couldn't think from where and the more he tried to focus the more it hurt, so he stopped.

He flat out refused the foods that they tried to give him. He felt like he shouldn't be allowed to eat. Was it guilt? He couldn't think why he would be guilty, but the feeling was there nevertheless. He did his absolute best to ignore it. The woman still talked to him and tried to convince him to eat.

"Do eat, Koschei," she had murmured one day, the words permeating the hazy fog that had settled around him. His hands loosened slightly from their death grip over his ears, more in surprise than anything else. "Please, won't you eat?"

Wasn't that his name? He felt like it could be his name. It might have been his name, he wasn't sure. It could have been his name, it felt right- but no, no, no, that was wrong- it wasn't- he wasn't-

He wasn't-

Wasn't he-?

But-

"It's not my name," he told her harshly, slightly confused when he came to the conclusion that he was attempting to sound threatening. He hadn't spoken in far too long, and his throat was dry and clogged from disuse. It didn't sound particularly threatening at all. That shouldn't make him upset. Why was he upset? "Don't call me that. It isn't my name."

The woman didn't speak for a while. He cringed slightly. If she was mad and left there wouldn't be anyone to talk to- the silence would come back, he couldn't _bear _it, he _couldn't_-

"It isn't?" Her voice was mild. She reached out to touch his shoulder, and he shied away. "Tell me then, my dear boy, what is your name?"

And therein lied the problem. He couldn't remember, he couldn't remember and it was just snippets and it _hurt_-

What could have been minutes or hours later, she placed a hand on his shoulder again. He was too focused on not shaking to pull away.

* * *

The Time Lords in the medical wing of the government complex (their governmental buildings were all linked and sprawled out across the city) were intrigued by the man in the strange clothes that had brought the children in, and even more intrigued by the presence of the Lady President at his side. They were talking like old friends, and it was unnerving. However, it was not their place to question, so question they did not.

At the very least, she seemed more at ease with the strange man. Perhaps they had taken the planetwide isolation lockdown down, and they could leave soon.

The Doctor wasn't really listening to Romana. He could claim that he was half-listening, but really, he wasn't listening to her very much at all.

There were ten Gallifreyans in front of him, including the children. At his side was one of his many dear friends, ascended to the position of Lady President of Gallifrey. When he had landed the TARDIS he had entered in a customarily spectacular fashion and interrupted a meeting of nearly thirty or so Time Lords.

He could see the orange tinge to the sky, past the darkened filter of the endless void beyond it. He could see the silver trees in the city slowly coming back to life, he had hurried through blackened fields with red grass slowly peeking up from it. He was standing inside the Citadel of the Time Lords, on Gallifrey. He was on Gallifrey.

"...tor, are you even listening to me?"

He blinked, focusing in on Romana. "Sorry. Um. Yes?"

She rolled her eyes fondly. "Still absent-minded as ever, I see."

"No. Well, yes, but not in this case, it's just- I'm- and this-"

"It's all right, my old friend." She patted his shoulder. "For us it has not been long, the horrors of the War are still fresh in our minds, but we know we have been saved. But for you...?"

She phrased the ending as a question, prompting him to respond. "Oh, five hundred years, give or take." He shrugged. "Would it be terribly insulting if I told you that I don't remember?"

Romana was entirely ready to tell him that yes, that would be rather insulting. How can you not know how long your home has been missing for? But he kept speaking without waiting for an answer.

"I've been telling people I meet that I'm twelve hundred years old," he told her softly. "I don't remember, Romana, I am old enough that I can't remember when I'm lying about my age. It might have been five hundred years since my eighth incarnation stole the moment, it might have been one hundred since all thirteen pulled the planet out of the Time Lock. I don't remember, Romana, and the Daleks-!"

He cut himself off before he could start talking too loudly and lowered his voice. "They keep coming back, Romana. I destroyed everything to save the universe and they keep coming _back_." He was rambling now, simply being back on his homeworld something too overwhelming for him to comprehend. "I always had home, Romana. Even when I was exiled, I still had _home_, it was still there, I could still go back. And then it was _gone_, and I couldn't..."

"You do far more than anyone ever gives you credit for, Doctor," Romana told him quietly. "You saved the planet. And those three children, look at them."

Viram and Iota seemed happier than they had been in a long time, even as the various nurses ran them through several scans and hurried Tianna off into a different room.

"Do you remember when we first met?" he asked suddenly.

She laughed. "Of course I do. I refused to be called Romana, and when you gave me a choice between that and Fred, I chose Fred."

He snickered. "Oh, I do miss those days."

"You miss that scarf?"

"It was a perfectly reasonable scarf, Romana..."

* * *

The woman wasn't here today. He didn't know where she was, but she wasn't here, and the silence was louder than normal. Clamping his hands over his ears didn't seem to help.

Something clawed at his stomach.

Was he hungry? It had been a long time since he had thought about that, but he supposed that everyone had to eat some time. Didn't the criminals eat, too? He didn't know what he did, but he was hungry.

He opened his eyes, squinting into the light. There was a window that had been opened to let in hazy light from the sunless, starless sky, and the viewpanels on the ceiling were glowing like they were supposed to. He brought his hands down from his ears. His fingers were slightly stiff.

No broth on the table, no woman in the chair. He was hungry.

It took him more tries than it should have to stand up. His legs continuously gave out from underneath him and his arms were shaking too badly to do much good when it came to propping him upright. He glared at nothing in particular and struggled with it until he finally managed to take a few shaky steps across the room.

Photographs. Time Lord art, bigger on the inside. That was what they were, wasn't it? Time Lords? The name left a bitter taste in his mouth, but it was definitely the right name.

It was an old photograph, and it was burned and scorched and charred from who-knows-what. Two little boys, red Gallifreyan robes, blond hair and dark hair and a house on a hill underneath the shade of massive silver trees.

_Can't catch me! Can't catch me!_

"Th... The... Theta."

The word felt foreign. It was right. That was... his name? No, no, that wasn't his name. The blond boy's name, that was who it was.

_And we can fly away in our TARDISes and-_

_Can't you hear it, Doctor? The drums, the never ending drums._

_So hot, fat, grease, blood-_

_Get out of the way._

_Here come the drums-_

_The Master race-_

_Get out of the way._

_End of the universe, have fun-_

_Get out of the-_

_Youdidthistomeallofmylife-_

_Get out of the way-_

_One-_

_Get out-_

_Two-_

_All of my life-_

_Three-_

And the Master, clutching the picture to his chest, remembered.


	9. Chapter 9

With the children safely in the medical wing, the two Time Lords began their trek back to the meeting room. Both walked at a leisurely pace, but the trip was made in silence. Both parties were practically bursting with questions, although neither spoke. Explanations could be given at the meeting.

She debated warning him about keeping his thoughts carefully locked down when they reached the doors, but there wasn't any time. Romana could hear his thoughts simmering just out of reach, and while she respected the other man enough not to pry, the rules had all been broken more than once and there were Time Lords in that room that wouldn't hesitate to break them again.

The Doctor stepped in front of her and opened the door, leaving her enough room to walk past and respectfully waited until she was a few steps into the room to follow. Contrary to what some might say, the man did have a sense of tact. She took her seat at the head of the table, gesturing for the Doctor to stand at her right, inwardly smirking. The seat next to the right of the head of the table, in the old customs, was more important than any of the other seats and sometimes she believed that Gallifrey's politicians ought to be taken down a notch.

He walked over to Romana's side, footsteps echoing loudly in the silent room. The Time Lords carefully watched him, and he carefully watched the Time Lords.

The doors of the TARDIS parked behind them were still open. A faint, pale, blue-white light spilled out onto the tarnished floor, and they could see a silver console inside. It contrasted greatly with the low lighting in the room and the dark blue exterior of the box, and a few of the Time Lords were looking at it curiously. The Doctor glanced back, seeming to realize that something was happening, and made a faint 'ah' noise.

"She doesn't like it when I forget to shut the doors behind me," he murmured. "Don't blame her, one time rodents from this jungle planet got into the circuitry and I spent weeks repairing..."

"Her?" a Time Lady asked in a rather haughty voice.

The Doctor snapped his fingers, smiling faintly when the doors shut. "My TARDIS. Gets all huffy with me, moves the rooms around sometimes."

Farther down the table, a Time Lord frowned. "It's a time capsule, it's not _sentient_, nor does it have gender."

"Actually, Commander," the Scientist spoke up, "there were studies that showed certain pilots who had kept the same time capsule for long enough formed a type of bond. TARDISes are grown, so while they aren't exactly sentient in the way that you and I are, they-"

"Gentlemen, ladies!" Romana glared. "Fascinating as these ethics are, we have a planet to run, and I will not stand for any more arguing!"

They were quiet. She let out a huff of air.

"Dismissing our original topic of discussion, I find it more important to discover what, exactly, has happened on both sides of the universe. For the most part we know what has been occurring on planet, however, we know nothing of what has been going on in the time that we have been missing, nor do we know how long of a time it has been. As for the Doctor, he knows nothing of how the planet fares and it would be in everyone's best interests to gain a full understanding of the situation. General, if you will."

"My Lady President." The General stood up, offering a curt bow to them both, warmer to Romana than to the Doctor. "My Lord Doctor. As most of us are aware, the device known as the Moment was stolen from the Omega Arsenal on the last day of the war, several hours after we lost contact with Rassilon and the High Council. It was believed that the Doctor-" Here a sharp glance at the Time Lord in question. "-planned to destroy both Time Lords and Daleks alike to spare the rest of the universe."

The Doctor's face had turned to a carefully neutral mask, but Romana could still feel his thoughts just out of reach, drifting through the air like vapor trails. Some muttering broke out here and there.

"In comparison to Rassilon's decision to destroy the entirety of the universe in order for a few select Time Lords to ascend to mere consciousness in the Void, this solution was potentially the more preferable one." And the continuing statement, the muttering stopped. "My information here is scarce at best, but thirteen of your incarnations, Doctor, saved the planet by pulling it into a parallel pocket universe, something which is hardly possible in theory, much less in actuality."

His curious look prompted the Doctor into talking.

"It's been... five hundred years, roughly, since I stole the Moment," he told them, voice sounding very quiet in the large room. "One hundred since I joined with my past two incarnations to save Gallifrey, the majority of which was spent searching for information to bring the planet back. In theory, it's entirely possible, with the proper set of equations, but finding one universe out of billions is nigh on impossible."

"But why did you not begin looking sooner?" someone shouted out.

"Crossing over one's own timeline corrupts the memory," he responded promptly, clapping his hands together nervously. "I was the most future version out of all of them, except for a brief appearance from my future self, so I was the one that retained the memories of the event. My eighth incarnation regenerated into the ninth with the belief that he somehow survived the Moment destroying everything, my tenth regenerated shortly after, if my hazy memories are anything to go by."

He glanced around the battered room, glanced back towards the TARDIS. "She needs some time to repair herself, but soon, hopefully, Gallifrey will be back to her rightful place in the stars. Provided that the planetary defense systems are working," he added quickly. "It's been five hundred years, people will dismiss the legends as legends and assume that the planet is ripe for the picking."

"A wise suggestion," Androgar stated.

The General gave him a sideways glance out of the corner of his eye, and the younger man fell quickly silent.

Romana nodded. Perhaps... just maybe, after so long, they could begin to hope again.

"Moving onto the next order of business, potential planetary reforms..."

* * *

He'd moved the TARDIS to an empty wing of the complex, close to the medical wing, presumably so he could check in on the children if he felt the need to. Romana gently ran her hand over the familiar blue wood of the front door, raising an eyebrow at the scorch marks across it, but pushed them open and stepped inside.

The Gallifreyan writing was the first thing that caught her eye. Paneled circles wrapped around the time rotor in the center of the room, three stacked on top of the other, and the panels each had a set of symbols on them. Were they names? Careful not to trip over her robes, she walked up the stairs and started circling around the glass floor, looking up. Yes, yes, they were names. She could see her own mixed in with dozens of others.

The second thing that caught her eye was the various tools that had been substituted for controls, but she had to assume that they worked, despite their dodgy appearance. The Doctor had been flying this ship for well over a thousand years, and it hadn't crashed yet.

"Romana!" The Doctor paused in the entrance of one of the many hallways leading deeper into the ship. "Didn't realize you were looking for me." He was holding an oily rag in his hands. His sleeves had been pushed back and his jacket was gone. Now that she looked around more, there was a toolbox underneath the console next to a sort of sling that was hooked up to the support beams underneath the floor for him to sit in.

"You glossed over some things in your telling, Doctor," she said, following after him as he went down the stairs and around to the opposite side of the console. She had to duck to make sure she didn't hit her head – he was taller than her, how did he _manage_? "Five hundred years, was it?"

"Give or take," he agreed. "I don't know, I already told you I don't remember."

"Only one hundred of which you have spent actively looking for the planet?"

"Roughly one hundred," he agreed again. "That's when this incarnation came to Gallifrey."

"Which means that for four hundred years of your life you believed that you destroyed your own species. And if the Daleks came back, then it was all for naught."

He had his back turned to her, but he stiffened and his hands stilled.

"I'm not here to pry, old friend." Romana walked up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder but not pulling him to face her. "Speak when you're comfortable and only then. The General simply expressed his wishes that I send someone to inform you that you ought to retrieve the Moment in order to return it to the Vaults. I took it upon myself to inform you instead."

She patted his shoulder once before turning and walked up the stairs and around the console and towards the doors. The lights seemed to get a little bit brighter as she passed. Maybe the ship did have some semblance of consciousness.

"Thank you, Romana."

She almost missed the words, as she was in the process of opening the doors, but she stopped and smiled, glancing back down to the glass floor. "Never a problem, my dear Doctor. Never a problem."

* * *

**Gallifreyan politics. Booooooring. Don't worry, the next few chapters get very exciting.**


	10. Chapter 10

The TARDIS was parked a good two or three miles out from where the cabin was. The Moment had been left unattended for so long that he worried disruptions from the TARDIS landing would mess with it, and he still didn't entirely understand how the device worked and didn't want to push his luck.

The Gallifrey he remembered was flowing crimson grass and silver trees stretching to the horizon as far as the eye could see, and burnt orange skies that faded to a light yellow, and a night full of stars and nebulas splattered against a deep copper backdrop. The Gallifrey of today was little more than a shell, black and molten and burning fire, hazy, blood-red skies.

As the Doctor walked through the sand, thoughts whirling around about his head in a whirl he could hardly begin to make sense of, he let out a shaky sigh.

One hundred years of searching. One hundred years of pouring through book after book after book, and yes, he had a few adventures of to the side with Clara when he couldn't see straight from all the words, but one hundred years of work had finally paid off. He was walking on his homeland, he was breathing in the familiar air. He could see the mountains off in the distance, the shattered remains of the Citadel to the west and the smoking rubble of Arcadia to the north. One hundred years.

But mere months for them, so it seemed. Time was relevant when one time traveled, and between that and how time ran differently between the two universes, he supposed that there was the possibility of him arriving just a few seconds after Gallifrey was moved or a few centuries.

He was home, he was home.

He had to tell people. Old friends, old faces, he had to tell them, he had to spread the news. And Clara, he most definitely had to tell Clara first. She changed his mind, after all.

The cabin was how he remembered it, old and dusty and falling apart. As he opened the door, more dust swirled into the air, and his attempts to wave it away with his hands in order to breathe easier only served to make it swirl around all the faster. He remembered the old sack lying on the floor, exactly where he had left it, and he remembered the bronze box, now tarnished and covered in a thin layer of the dust that seemed to be everywhere.

The Doctor knelt down next to it, digging through his pockets until he had a handkerchief in his hands that he could use to brush the offending dirt away, painstakingly cleaning every last corner and curve of it until it shone in the non-existent lighting. It didn't matter, truthfully – the Moment would go back into the deepest section of the Omega Arsenal, locked away in the Time Vaults, never to be used and its sole purpose to collect more dust.

"Hello, old friend," he murmured when he had finished. "Time to bring you back home, now."

"Do you ever worry when someone's breathing changes?"

The unexpected voice caused him to jump with a start, scrabbling upwards so he was standing and looking around frantically for the source, for the speaker. His eyes froze when he landed on the figure across from him. She sat on a stack of crates that had been covered by thick blankets in the vain hope they might be used again, swinging her legs back and forth like a child, wearing ragged clothes. Her leggings were brown and full of holes, her white skirt had been tied back so it was much shorter and easier to walk in, her heavy jacket was ripped at the joint of the elbows. She wore a faded blue tunic underneath and tattered boots.

"Someone you know so well," Amy sighed. Not-Amy. She couldn't be Amy, his little Amelia Pond, Amy Williams. Amy was locked away in the 1930s, safe and alive, Amy was dead, and so was Rory, and he had thought he was past all of it but the scars across his hearts still hurt. "Someone you know everything about, right down to the tiniest things. And it gets to the point where at even the slightest change in their breathing you know something isn't right."

She hopped off the crates. The Doctor's eyes were fixated on her hair, still a vibrant shade of red to rival Gallifrey's fields of grass.

"I listen to the universe sing, Doctor. I listen to her singing, and I can hear her voice echoing through the cosmos. I can hear every whisper, every sigh, every breath. I can't hear that here. I'm glad you showed up when you did."

"You're the Moment," he finally managed to say, taking a shaky breath himself. "The interface."

"That I am, Raggedy Man," the Moment agreed. He flinched.

"Don't," he said stiffly. "That face, it's painful to me-"

And before he could finish talking, no obvious, noticeable changes occurring, Not-River stood in front of him. It was like she had always been there, and he couldn't quite remember if Not-Amy had been talking to him or not.

"The Time Lords sent you, yes?" Not-River asked. The clothes were different, too, a simple, pure white dress with hints of golden and blue threads. "To bring me back to the Vaults."

"Yes," he agreed.

The Moment tutted, shaking her head, and then Not-Rose was there, wearing an outfit he vaguely remembered from the last time he had stood in the cabin – yes, she had been there, hadn't she? It was hard to tell.

"I came in this form to your past self, when you stole me," she told him gently. "But it was from your future, then. All these past faces, do they bring you know joy to see them again?"

"I'm old," he responded. "I've lived a long life, I've met millions of people, and I've lost them all. Each and every one, I outlive them, or they leave, or _I _leave, or they die. My past isn't something I particularly care to think about."

And the good memories certainly outweighed the bad, but they were tainted and stained by the underlying sadness of it all. He regretted nothing, he regretted absolutely none of it, but his gaze remained forward, hopeful of things to come.

And without any noticeable changes again, there was a man standing in front of him, wearing traditional Gallifreyan robes, although instead of red they were black, lined with gold. His hair was curly, a ginger color that made him envious, and his eyes were such that he couldn't quite tell what color they were. They constantly seemed to be changing, they could be blue or gray or green or hazel or brown, he didn't know. He had a slim build and pale, aristocratic features, and prominent cheekbones.

"Would this be better?" the Moment asked, in a voice unexpectedly deep. "This one is from your future. Or maybe it _is _your past, I do get those two mixed up."

"No, I don't recognize this one." The Doctor smiled. "I look forward to meeting you, whoever you are."

"Ah, all in good time, Doctor." The Moment gave a secretive smile. "All in good time."

He didn't seem particularly inclined to say anything else, and the Doctor didn't know what to say to him, so they stood in silence for several minutes, regarding each other calmly. The Doctor made the first move, turning back to pick up the Moment off of the floor, then looking back at the interface.

"Thank you," he said after a pause. "You showed me the future I needed to see, and I... I don't think I can ever repay you for that. You have my eternal gratitude."

The Moment chuckled, patting the Doctor on the shoulder. "Strike a deal with me, why don't you?" When the Doctor realized the question wasn't hypothetical and nodded, he continued. "Come and visit. The Time Lords are changing, Doctor, adapting, but change is slow. It will be centuries before they start to accept TARDISes as fully sentient, when they begin to comprehend that they are not the sole form of life and everything else beneath them."

"There's a day when that will change?" The Doctor laughed softly. "I hope I'm around to see it."

"They will place me in the Vaults," the Moment continued. "Since my creation I have been feared and regarded as a tool that should never once be touched. I was made for a purpose and I do not wish to fulfill it."

The Doctor paused to muddle this over.

"You're the galaxy eater," he said, coming to a realization. "A machine so powerful that it gained sentience, something able to pass judgment. And they're scared of you because you could judge them, and they keep you locked away because with sentience you might go off on your own. They never talked to you, did they?"

"You were the first to think to," the Moment agreed. "Does that sound agreeable, Doctor?"

The Time Lord smiled. "I think I can make it work. Possibly put in a word or two to Romana. Er, the Lady President. She traveled with me, when she was younger, she might be more apt to understand your sentience."

"You are a kind man, Doctor, and the universe has done you many hardships." The Moment sighed, shaking his head. "But she sings of you. Ah, yes, she sings of you!"

And he pressed two fingers to the Doctor's head, and his vision went dark.

* * *

When he woke up, the Doctor was on the floor of the TARDIS, the Moment sitting innocently next to him. The hologram was nowhere to be seen. Groaning, he stood up, stretching and wincing slightly as his bones cracked. This body was getting old. He couldn't afford to sleep on floors.

It seemed like all the Moment had done to him was transport him. He didn't feel any ill effects, and despite his almost constant state of perpetual exhaustion that he tended to find himself in nowadays, he actually felt well rested. A quick glance at the scanner showed him that they were still in the same place, and only a few hours had passed, so he started plotting their course back to the Citadel.

"Home at last," he murmured under his breath. "Home at last."

* * *

**I just wanted to say that I'm incredibly sorry for not updating yesterday! My internet was being particularly slow and the website wasn't cooperating, so I couldn't get the chapter to upload. Here's two chapters today, though, and we'll be back to updating once a day again.**


	11. Chapter 11

He was sitting up when the woman came back in, cross-legged, looking at the picture. He remembered her name, now, too. Imala. Gallifreyan for _she who is graceful_, although she insisted that he call her _Matier_. Mother. He had been little more than a child, they were both children. Things were simple then.

He hated simple things, they were so _dull_.

Maybe he missed those simple things.

"Koschei?" she murmured hesitantly.

"It's so quiet," he murmured back, voice still rough and hoarse from disuse. "The drums, Imala, the _drums_..."

She sat down in her chair and patted his hand. He hand large hands, thin fingers, this time around. He hadn't really bothered to look at his appearance, but his hair kept falling into his eyes. Red hair.

"I was instructed, when we brought you here, to inform someone the moment you became lucid," she informed him quietly. "I can wait for a little while, if you would like some time before they start questioning you on what happened."

"You were there," he muttered. "Rassilon was there. Two guards and the other shamed fool."

There was a sneer to his words but it was forced, and there was no bite, no true feeling behind it.

"Rassilon is dead." His head snapped up and his eyes locked with hers, and he might have shied away from the forgiveness there had he not been so surprised. "I-"

"You killed him, you were pulled back into the War with us. The Lady President ordered that the Nurse do all in his power to save you, and save you he did."

"Lady President..." He frowned. Things were still fuzzy, hazy. He remembered but he didn't want to. "Who?"

"Lady President Romana," Imala told him.

He looked back at the picture, tilting it from side to side to catch every angle of the captured moment of time. He didn't remember when it had been taken.

"Tell them what you will." He tried to go for indifference, but he didn't pull it off very well. "It doesn't matter to me."

She sat with him for the remainder of the day before leaving. Neither of them said a word.

* * *

Romana was standing on a balcony when the Doctor found her. The view used to be gorgeous from their viewpoint – now it showed ravaged cities and barren hills and empty skies.

"The General seemed relieved to have the Moment back," he announced to nobody in particular. "I tried to tell him he should be gentle with it, but he didn't want to listen."

"He's hardly going to set if off by accident," Romana laughed.

"No," the Doctor agreed, chuckling. "No, I wouldn't think so. But it's a machine that gained sentience. It's alive, it can think, it can dream, and you're locking it away in a vault where it will never see the light of day again. I just think you ought to treat your so-called tools a little more carefully, they might start to get annoyed."

She glanced back at him after a few moments. "You do realize how crazy you're sounding."

"Never stopped me."

"No, I suppose it didn't."

The reason they had never used the Moment was _because _it had gained sentience. It was horrible enough to use the tool for its intended purposes, and to have to live with that staggering amount of _guilt_, but it was alive, it was watching, it knew exactly what you were doing and would make no move to stop you, just watch.

And it hit her with a jolt that it was _exactly _what the Doctor had gone through.

"Did you intend to survive?" she blurted out.

The Doctor looked at her curiously. "I'm sorry?"

"When you used the Moment. Did you plan to survive?"

"Do you think I wanted to?" He scoffed, but his expression had turned brittle. "Romana, I fully intended to die that day along with everything else, and was firm in my beliefs that the universe would be the all the better off for it." He leaned on the railing, heedless of the fact that it would probably crumble under too much weight, and looked out at the city. "That's what I told her. She told me that if I chose that path, surviving would be my punishment."

"The Moment." Who else could he be referring to?

"It made a deal with me. Company, as thanks for it showing me the future I needed to change my past."

Romana froze, and the Doctor seemed to realize what exactly it was that he just said.

"Change your past," she repeated bluntly. "_Change your past._"

"Well, I might not have!" he was very quick to continue, falling into a ramble. "The timelines were crossing over each other, I never remembered that I tried to save Gallifrey up until this point, so for all I know it had already happened, but as far as I remember back _then _it actually didn't and Gallifrey was destroyed along with everything else."

"Change your past." Romana dropped her head into her hands. "Your own personal timeline. I should have you banished for that."

"Too late!" the Doctor said brightly. "They already did that."

"Do I want to know what else you've been up to?"

He paused, tilting his head to one side in thought. "Probably not."

"You never change, old friend."

They looked out at the Citadel, and the Doctor eyed the glass dome above them. It was massive, and still encompassed about half of the city, but two and a half of the four beams that curved around the sides to meet at the top were missing, and there was a jagged slice through the sky where the dome had been breached. Scaffolding was barely visible from where they were standing, although how they would go about rebuilding such a thing was a mystery.

"We are working on fixing it," Romana defended as she followed the Doctor's gaze. "It's not exactly as if we have abundant resources to build with."

"I wasn't saying anything!"

"I can hear you thinking." He rolled his eyes, but she persisted. "No, honestly, Doctor, you might think you aren't broadcasting but your thoughts are like a beacon."

The Doctor paused, and she could see the concentration etched into his features as he struggled to reign in his mind. "It's been a while since I needed to do that," he said finally, and the air had gone silent, no more thoughts murmuring just out of reach.

"I gathered as much. I know enough not to pry, old friend, but there are others who are not so kind."

"Thank you for warning me."

"Might I ask who Clara is?"

The Doctor jumped slightly, but then he smiled. "Oh, a human. I still travel with them, although she's a special one. Died to save me."

"You've... seen her death, in her future, your past?" Romana watched him with pity. To have to witness such a thing, it would be agony...

"No," he quickly dismissed the idea. Perhaps a bit too quickly. "No, she... well, it's complicated, and if I explained all of it here you might have to actually banish me for good, but she's saved me more times than I can count. Actually!"

And he spun around, tapping Romana on the nose. The breach of conduct was so sudden Romana didn't really have time to react.

"Actually!" he repeated brightly, "she's technically the reason why you're all here to begin with."

"I don't understand."

She didn't, and with the Doctor, it was sometimes just best to say it outright, lest he go on in an infinite ramble before finally realizing that you hadn't been following anything he was saying.

"How could a human do anything for us?"

"Humans, Romana, _humans_." He sighed. "Brutal, yes, but that's nature for you. They're _kind_. At their core, they are kind, beautiful creatures, that just happen to go to extreme lengths for their beliefs."

His smile dropped, faded away. "I was going to do it. The three of us, we were going to destroy Gallifrey so we would never have to bear the burden alone." Romana sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes starting to burn with tears for her friend.

To live with that kind of guilt would be unimaginable. To live with it three times over would drive any man far past insanity.

"And she just stood there, and she shook her head. She's a good girl, Romana, and I'm proud of her.'

The mood was somber now, but the silence was still comfortable, and the two stood in silence, watching the city sleep.

* * *

**Time to start bringing Clara into this. You didn't think I could leave her out, did you? As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and feedback is appreciated.**


	12. Chapter 12

Most of the time that he spent on Gallifrey he spent sitting through meetings. He sat through meetings with the builders, meetings with the citizens, meetings with the High Command and the War Council and the Lady President and the Senate. He had forgotten how tediously _dull _it was to spend time on this planet, had forgotten the main reason why he had left in the first place was to get away from all of the politics. Ah, well, he would sit through centuries of it if it got Gallifrey back to her rightful place in the heavens.

They had finally elected (in yet another meeting) that Gallifrey should not be removed from its pocket universe until they had managed to finish repairing the dome around the Citadel and get most of the citizens transported back from the wastelands into safety. The legends of the Time Lords were exactly that, now, nothing more than legend. People would listen to them as a flight of fancy, a bedtime story, and laugh at them come the day. Once they were back, word of the planet's return would spread like cosmic wildfires across the universe and anyone that thought there might be something to get out of it for themselves would come rushing in. Gallifrey, without her defenses, would be ripe for the picking.

What time that the Doctor didn't spend in meetings he spent in the TARDIS. The box had been moved to an unused room, and he either slept or tinkered underneath the console to wind down. Politics. He _hated _politics. If he wasn't in a meeting he could be found inside the box.

Once he tried to talk to the General about making sure that the Moment had company. The other man had scoffed at him, turning and leaving without so much as a word on the matter, although he was fairly sure he had heard the muttered words of 'old fool' floating on the air as the red robes disappeared around a corner.

Rude.

Some several weeks had passed, the Doctor found himself in traditional red robes of his own, dug out from the far depths of the TARDIS wardrobe. He hadn't even realized that he still owned a set, but had decided it was necessary to look when it clicked as to how conspicuous he was in his earthly clothing. And occasionally he allowed himself the brief wander around the hallways, at night, when he could blend in and nobody stopped to thank him or ask questions, or eye him with mistrust.

Some several weeks had passed when he was on such a wander, not exactly paying attention to where he was going and somehow winding up in the medical wing of the complex, humming a faint tune to himself. There was a vague intention that he might go and visit the children – everyone had neglected to inform him how they were doing, but those vague intentions were promptly interrupted as, in his lack of paid attention, he crashed headlong into another man walking in the opposite direction, with an equal lack of paid attention.

"Watch it!" the other man snapped at him.

"Sorry!" the Doctor said quickly, before he could really register who he was talking to. Once he did notice, however, he was actually stunned into silence.

The man was the same one from which the Moment had chosen to speak to him from. He had the same red hair and the same ever-changing eyes and the same defined features. He even had the same robes, black edged with gold, but this man seemed far more gaunt than the other one, and the fabric hung off of his thin frame in great swaths.

"Have we met before?" he blurted before the red-haired man could walk away, grumbling under his breath. "You seem familiar."

The man paused. "Doubtful. It's a new face."

"Ah."

Instead of walking away, the two stood watching each other for the longest time, each with the feeling that they might know the other but neither wanting to voice it.

"Were you heading in that direction?" the other man asked mildly, nodding to the end of the hall from which the Doctor had come.

"No, just wandering in that general direction." He waved a hand vaguely in the direction from which the other man had been walking from. "And yourself?"

"Quite the same, I suppose."

"Perhaps we might wander together."

"Perhaps."

By an unspoken agreement they started walking in the same direction. The man seemed to have a habit of tapping, be it tapping his fingers together or the rhythm of his footsteps or patting his hand against his leg as he walked. It didn't bother the Doctor particularly much, but he still had the feeling that he knew the other man, and it wasn't simply from the Moment's brief foreshadowing.

The other man could tell that the Time Lord, seemingly young in appearance, was far older than he appeared and almost certainly someone he had met before. Things were awfully fuzzy, but he never forgot a face, even one's he hadn't seen yet.

"I was planning to visit some children," the Doctor said after a few minutes of silence. "Three of them, I brought them back from the wastelands. The oldest one was sick, the younger two asked for my help."

"A noble thing," the red-haired man murmured.

"Hmm."

There were no nurses in the room when they finally got there, but Iota was curled up at the foot of Tianna's bed, asleep, Viram nestled in between the two. Tianna was either still unconscious or asleep, but they looked far healthier than when the Doctor had seen them last. Gone were the ragged clothes, replaced by Gallifreyan robes in the cases of the younger two and a plain white gown for the eldest.

"They can't be more than thirty," the Doctor said after a long pause. "Thirty five, at the oldest, but that would be pushing it."

"How many children dead?" the red-haired man asked faintly. "How many others like this in the wastelands?"

_Two-point-four-seven._

_Billion._

The thoughts were strong enough that any Time Lord within the vicinity might have been able to pick them up. The red-haired man, on his part, gave no indication that he had heard save for a slight tensing motion, and the two continued standing in silence.

* * *

_The Valiant was not the happy place it once was. Not that it was ever particularly happy to begin with, but anything was better than this hell they were trapped in. Anything was better than this._

_The Doctor grunted as another kick was delivered straight to his ribs, and then hands like iron were clamped around his arms and heaving him upwards and the Master's breath was hot in his face._

"_How did it __**feel**__?" he demanded to know, giving the other Time Lord a rattling shake. "Gallifrey, dead, two civilizations on their knees because of __**you**__..." A sharp knee to the gut. "How many families? How many dead? How many children-"_

"_Two-point-four-seven." The words were growled out, yet still hoarse, empty. The Doctor's expression had fractured, fragmented, and collapsed into nothing. "Two and a half billion children. Does that make you __**happy **__now? Are you glad to know how many died, Master?"_

_Wounded, standing tall in situations where any lesser man would have fractured and died long ago, the Doctor shook his head._

"_Better coward than killer," he sighed. "You made the right choice in running."_

_And unsure what to make of that, the Master had left two slaves to drag the other man to a new location before leaving himself, and then there was no sign that he had been there to begin with._


	13. Chapter 13

The sirens were blaring out their warning.

People rushed, panicked, through the hallways, guards tried to maintain some semblance of order. Romana was barking out orders and ignoring the presidential escorts trying to get her to leave to somewhere safe, the General was relaying her orders to those that couldn't hear over the commotion.

"My Lady President!" A guard all but flew into the room, slamming the doors shut behind him. "My Lady President, it's aiming for the children!"

Romana's lips pressed together in a thin line.

With the city in ruins and the constant need of scrap metal, they had resorted to moving the population into the inner walls of the Citadel, the places that used to have been reserved solely for the politicians during times of peace. Now it was teeming with the tired and the hungry, the orphans looking for their parents and the parents looking for their children. The youngest ones and the elderly were placed in the medical wing, most of which had been turned into yet another shelter. At least they weren't running out of room. Gallifrey had a population of nearly twenty billion during times of peace, now chopped in half to ten billion, and only two cities. The rooms were all bigger on the inside, lest they crowd the planet into overpopulation.

The medical wing held the people who couldn't fight for themselves, it always had. The sick, the old. It was furthest back, almost directly in the center of the city.

And there was a Dalek flying straight towards it.

They should have been more thorough in their searching. Just because Gallifrey had moved, just because it had been nearly six months without a single sighting of a live Dalek, just because they thought they were protected by no means meant that they were safe. They'd missed one, and they were paying for it in blood.

One Dalek. One Dalek, trapped underneath wreckage inside the city. One Dalek, hibernating, only awoken when their efforts to start cleaning unearthed it.

One hundred dead, because of one Dalek.

The battle TARDISes were grounded, they had stopped the mass-production of weapons in an attempt to regain peaceful notions. They were hopelessly outgunned and hilariously unprepared.

Fools, all of them.

"Ro- Lady President!"

The voice over the crowd and the not-quite breach of conduct had Romana pausing, looking around for its source. It took her a bit to find the Doctor, for in his red robes he looked almost the same as everyone else under a passing glance, but he pushed his way through to her side.

"I've gotten everyone that I could find into the farthest rooms of the medical wing," he told her quickly. "The Dalek is between them and my TARDIS, so that's the safest place for them. Is everyone out else out of the way?"

Romana frowned slightly. "The wing has been entirely cleared save for the one's trapped-"

"Wonderful!" He clapped his hands together, offering up a strange smile. "Anyway, you keep everything in order, I'll take care of the Dalek."

He had turned and started walking away before the words really registered. "Are you insane?" she shouted after him. "Are you completely _mad_? To go up against even a single Dalek alone is suicide!"

"Don't worry about me!" he called back. "I've done much worse!"

"At least take soldiers with you-"

He turned back to face her at that, albeit only briefly. "No," he stated. "No soldiers. No more, Romana."

Stomach twisting into knots around the ball of ice that seemed to have settled there, Romana started throwing out orders twice as quickly. As people scurried off to do as she asked, she turned to face the General.

"Get a team of soldiers if you can manage it," she snapped. "I want them on backup, but don't go in unless it starts firing. Clear?"

"Ma'am."

* * *

He wasn't sure if the silence or the drums was better sometimes.

It was silent now, and he still felt constantly ill, like he had been ever since he had woken up and there was nothing, but the silence was accompanied by fear. It pressed down on them like a shroud and they couldn't breathe, and there were at least a hundred of them crammed into the far back room.

"Mister?"

Some of the children had crowded around him, and he shifted uncomfortably. Even back _then_ he had never cared for people, and after the drums he certainly hadn't, and now he didn't even know who he was but certainly he shouldn't be trusted with children. Who let the children near him?

It was a little girl and a little boy, the boy younger than the girl, at the front of the group. Behind them were more children, the eldest perhaps being thirty and looking as though she might pass out on her feet from some illness and the youngest a helpless babe being held in the arms of a girl that couldn't be too much older than him.

"What?" he snapped. An old man he didn't recognize glared at him, and he tried not to roll his eyes. Children. He didn't like children.

"Mister, we're scared," the little girl whispered. "Aren't they supposed to be gone? The Daleks, they left, didn't they?"

"One stayed," he told them. He should be consoling them right now, right? That seemed right. Maybe. "But just one, and we're safe here."

The lie felt like acid on his tongue. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Didn't he used to lie with ease, and no regrets? Or maybe that was an illusion conjured up by this broken mind. He didn't know.

He hated that he was in this situation to begin with. They didn't keep him in the medical wing, even when he never spoke nor ate, so if he had stayed there he would have been fine. But he'd seen that picture frame, he'd- he had _remembered_ and he couldn't just sit still with that crushed weight so he'd gone for a walk and crashed into that strange man – and he couldn't help but think he knew that man, so he'd followed him.

Two and a half billion. He'd caught the stray thought, and nobody else knew how many children had supposedly died that horrible day except for one man.

And it made sense, it really did.

He hadn't expected to be miserable for long. It was the last day of the Time War when Rassilon tried to claw his way free and he had killed Rassilon, so theoretically he ought to be dead right now. But they forced a regeneration, shoved his mind back into place and they tried to help, and he had been alive for months. It would make sense that that foolish man would have had something to do with it.

Gallifrey lived.

Or at least, for now it did. A single Dalek could wreak havoc on the planet.

He'd gone to the medical wing with that man and then when the Dalek came he was trapped here with the staff and the elderly and the children. Then again, he supposed he could count as elderly. He certainly felt like it sometimes.

Imala met his eyes from across the room. She had children crowding around her as well; a lot of the elderly did. He didn't look that out of place, and the children probably saw him as someone who wasn't busy that could help them.

"Mister, can you tell us a story?"

The little boy wriggled out of the little girl's arms and climbed up into his lap before he could resist. The children pressed around him, and he desperately tried not to snap at them.

"What's your name, Mister?" another child asked from by his feet.

Who even knew any more?

"Koschei," he muttered, feeling as if he could practically hear Imala watching him from across the room. "Do you have a particular story in mind?"

"Tell us about a hero," the oldest girl (yet still so very young) suggested softly, all but collapsing into a sitting position next to him and leaning her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. "I like stories about heroes."

He just barely managed to keep his expression from curling up into disgust. Heroes. _Why_.

"All right. Fine. Let's see..." He shifted into a slightly more comfortable position, smoothing out his robes as best he could. He didn't like children. "There was a man that lived at the end of the universe. He was an old man, a professor, and his job was to build a rocket ship..."

* * *

The Doctor sauntered through the hallways of the Citadel. From what he could tell, the Dalek ought to be right around the corner... ah! Yes, yes, there it was. It had its back to him- did Daleks even have backs? They were sort of blobby, they didn't really have fronts or backs. Their armor did, but did that count? Because then he would have to say that the Dalek had the back of its armor towards him and that was a pain to say... The Dalek's eyestalk was facing away from him, regardless of whether it had a back or not.

"Hello!" he shouted at it, all the while repeating a sort of mantra in his head about how he better not die or Romana might murder him. "Mister Dalek! The Doctor is here to see you."

It spun around faster than a large metal pepper pot should be able to, advancing forwards, twitching it's gun arm.

"_The Doctor is detected!" _it cried. _"Exterminate! Exterminate! Extermin-"_

"Oh, shut up," he scoffed, and it skidded to a halt. "I've heard it all before, you know. Daleks, Daleks, Daleks... you don't know when to stop, do you? I mean, really, I met your Emperor, and he died because of a human. Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast, they died because of humans too. Of course, they made alliances with humans to begin with so it was their own fault, really. And Dalek Sec tried to _become _a human, and Dalek Caan tricked Davros."

"_These names are meaningless! Explain! Explain!"_

"The Cult of Skaro?" he asked, and it seemed to register in the Dalek's databanks, for the creature slid backwards a bit. "And surely you've heard of the Emperor, I mean, he is your leader. Same with Davros. Ah, Dalek politics, enough to give anyone a headache. Moving on!"

The Doctor started to pace, and the Dalek didn't fire, simply watched his every move warily.

"You're the last Dalek left," he told it shortly. "Outside the war, they're all dead. They obliterated themselves in their own crossfire, making you the only living Dalek on a planet full of Time Lords! And me, I'm the one in front of you."

"_Daleks do not surrender!"_

"No, they don't," the Doctor agreed.

He pulled the sonic screwdriver out from a pocket in his robes, tossing it into the air, watching it spin, and catching it. He repeated the process several times, watching the Dalek occasionally twitch, like it wasn't sure if it should shoot him or not.

"Your commanding officers are dead," he stated. "You have no more orders. You're never going to get any orders. So really, there's only a couple of options here. You go surrender or you die."

"_Daleks do not surrender!"_

It wasn't in good condition, the Dalek. It was old and beaten, there were cracks in its armor and several of the spheres lining the sides of it were missing. Its eyestalk was bent, the plunger arm too mangled to be of any use. If the Doctor were a different man he might have felt pity.

"This is my home!" The Doctor took a step forward. The Dalek slid back even more. "I have lost this once, I have lost more than any living being could _possibly _conceive to the likes of you, and I'm not going to lose it again. Am I clear?"

The Dalek twitched, its eyestalk jerked from side to side, spun around in a full circle to assess its surroundings.

"_My final orders were to destroy the Time Lords. I will follow orders!"_

"Those orders are void! I'm telling you, there's nothing left. Scan, scan! Your scanners are still working, aren't they? There is _nothing _left."

The Dalek twitched again.

There was a moment of silence.

* * *

From the safety of the inner walls of the Citadel, the General and Romana watched from the cameras in something bordering on awe as the Dalek exploded, sending shrapnel flying to embed itself in the surrounding walls. The Doctor looked on for a few moments before his head seemed to drop slightly, and he turned and walked away without another word. Behind them, the blue box that served as the Doctor's TARDIS hummed a little bit louder, almost as though she were trying to sympathize.

Which was ridiculous. Despite what he said, TARDISes weren't sentient, and the military man was sticking firmly to that belief.

"They fear him," the General murmured. "All he had to do was start talking, and it stopped and it _listened_. Backed away."

"He was always good at talking," Romana replied softly.

"He knew about the Cult of Skaro," Androgar put in weakly. "He said he met them, and the Emperor, and they died because of... because of humans? And he still lives, after all that, that man..."

"Questions later, Androgar," Romana murmured. "I don't think he seems in the mood at the moment."

She turned to the door, and the Doctor came in a moment later. He seemed oddly subdued, even as he smiled at them.

"They never seem to stop," he finally said, looking out the window. "Cockroaches of the galaxy."

It would make sense that the Daleks had survived beyond the war, in some way, somehow. Romana chose not to comment.

"You saved us," she said instead. "A single Dalek could destroy the entire city before it was taken out, you've saved us all today, Doctor. Innumerable lives will live to see tomorrow."

"Two-point-four-seven," he said tersely.

The General looked at him oddly. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Two point four-seven," the Doctor repeated. "Billion. Two point four-seven billion children. Hardly immeasurable if I could count them."

And before they could even begin to absorb exactly what he meant by that, he was turning and wandering back towards his TARDIS, waving a hand and announcing something about repairs before the doors shut behind him without warning and they could no longer hear what he was saying.


	14. Chapter 14

The Doctor didn't notice the elderly woman come into his TARDIS until she spoke, and then he overreacted just a little bit, almost falling off the stairs he was sitting on reading his book. Theoretical universes and how they would theoretically work. Rather important nowadays.

She slipped quietly in through the doors, which he had been leaving unlocked more often than not. The TARDIS wouldn't let anybody in that she didn't like, anyway – he'd found that out when the General was in the same room alone with her and she had decided it would be a good idea to project random people and sounds from in the corner of his vision. It made him paranoid, or more paranoid, at any rate, for weeks on end, driving them all insane.

"It's a fascinating theme that you've chosen," she said in a gentle tone. The Doctor yelped, started, fumbled with the book and just barely avoided dropping it before losing his balance and nearly getting tangled in his robes.

"Um... thank you?" he said weakly, looking at her in confusion. He didn't recognize her. She was old, wore gray robes instead of the traditional red. Well, maybe he recognized her a little bit, but he couldn't think from where. He was so old, he didn't know anymore. He didn't know how old he was, either, but that was a different matter. "Can I help you with something?"

He put the book down and stood up quickly, remembering that Time Lords had that odd obsession over politeness and conduct and other ridiculous things such as that.

"Those names... they are names, right?" She nodded up at the gray panels encircling the time rotor in layers. "Friends of yours?"

"Some of them," he sighed softly. "Susan, Ian, Barbara, Jamie... Tegan, Adric...Melanie, Sarah, Alastair, Harry..." Trailing off, the Doctor shook his head. So many names. He couldn't fit them all up there if he even tried, and sometimes if he didn't look at the words for long enough he couldn't remember them.

"Lost?" she murmured.

"Some of them," he repeated, and then again, "Can I help you with something?"

She turned to look at him, although there was an underlying hint of... something. Confusion? Hurt? "I was in the medical wing, and I wanted to thank you, my dear boy, on behalf of the people that you saved."

My dear boy. Nobody called him that, not on Gallifrey, not on any planet. The words made his hearts ache.

"I..." He swallowed. "I'm sorry. Have... have we met? I'm afraid... well, the memory's going a bit these days."

There it was again, definitely confusion and hurt, but also pity and unfathomable... unfathomable love...

"My dear boy," she repeated, still in that same gentle tone, but her voice was shaking ever so slightly. "My dear Theta..."

He might have actually pitched forwards onto his face had she not been there to steady him, and mother and son stared at each other for the longest time.

The Doctor was the first to move, letting out a shuddering gasp and burying his face in the crook of her shoulder, and he felt like a tiny boy again as she murmured old comforts in his ear. So long, so long... and he hadn't recognized her. How couldn't he have recognized her?

"Don't be sad, my dear," Imala said quietly. "Don't be sad. You are here, now, and I am here, and Gallifrey still sings her song to the stars. Don't be sad. Don't be sad."

"Why- why would- you can't just _forgive _me, I was- I would have _burned _all of you, two and a half billion children and billions of others-"

"I'm your mother," she said, still quiet, but firm in her words. "I will always forgive you whether you want me to or not."

"I didn't recognize-"

"Your face is unfamiliar to me, and it has been many centuries since we last met. You never took any photographs, I don't think. Or perhaps you did, but it hurt to look at."

That was exactly what he had done. He had myriads of photos of old friends and family and places he had once been. He had books from home and videos and much more, but they were all locked away in the depths of the TARDIS collecting dust. He hadn't gone looking for them in ages, he doubted he could even find the room again.

"I didn't look at photos of your father until after you left the Academy," she countered. "It is nothing to be ashamed of, my dear boy. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and your perceived slights require no forgiveness. I am_ proud_, Theta, I am so very proud of you..."

* * *

No one really bothered to question the Doctor being late for the meeting. The man was still a madman to most of them who didn't like him, and questionably sane to those who did. No one really bothered to question the Master being late to the meeting – he was insane and not to be trusted and it had gotten to the point where as long as he was out of their way then they didn't care.

The doors opened several minutes late, and surprisingly enough, the two walked in together, glaring sullenly at one another but not voicing any complaints.

"My Lord Doctor," Romana greeted. "My Lord Master. How kind of you to join us."

"The children wouldn't leave me alone," the Master said after a pause. The Doctor's lips twitched slightly as he repressed a smile. Romana's eyebrow arched upwards, but she made no comment, and they resumed their typical discussions that quickly descended (per the norm) into arguing and the dressing-down of one another's plans until it finally fell into petty insults at their pride.

Time Lord politics. Horribly dull and incredibly inconvenient when they started arguing.

The Doctor looked over at his former friend turned former enemy.

"This was one of the reasons I left," he said, nodding towards the chaos. Romana was attempting to regain order, but it didn't seem to be working. "I _hated _politics. Never understood how my mother could stand it."

"She was a patient woman, your mother," the Master agreed, not looking once towards the other Time Lord. A moment in which neither spoke. "Still is."

"She said she watched over you after you killed Rassilon."

"You finally spoke to her?"

"Hard to speak to her when nobody told me she was alive."

Androgar made a bold comment towards the General, who promptly turned and started berating the younger man. Romana pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"Look at us old fools." The Master sighed, shaking his head ruefully. "Silence, Doctor. Noise is what kept us sane, wasn't it? And I remembered and you never forgot."

The Doctor gave him an odd look. "Sane is still a very loose concept here, I would think."

They ducked in unison when the spare object or two started flying through the air towards targets across the opposite side of the table.

"Quite possibly."

"No, I'm quite certain on this one."

"And who was the better one in their studies?"

"I seem to recall I built a sonic device my first year in the Academy-"

"_While _running from Ushas, your ulterior motive in that case was avoiding people, not getting proper marks on your exams."

"Shut up."

"No."

They drifted back into a mildly uncomfortable lapse in conversation.

Imala had told the Doctor that the Master seemed to be doing better, and he ought to seek out his former friend. That and he also ought to visit the medical wing sometime – the children would love him, she was sure. Such a dear old woman. A bit absent-minded, but weren't they all? She was kind and caring and when the situation called for it, her words and wit were sharper than knives. She couldn't have made it far in her line of work otherwise.

The Master, already in a sour mood due to the children he had been pushed into interacting with, was further annoyed at the summons to a meeting. They had talked to him for hours and hours every day for multiple weeks on end, finally determining that pinpointing his mental state really wasn't their top priority at this rate, and since he hadn't done anything for months, now, as long as someone kept an eye on him, he was free to do as he wished. Of course, because he had a way of thinking out of the box and was generally regarded as brilliant, if insane, they would drag him back again to look over different theories for terraforming and rebuilding and actually moving Gallifrey back out of the pocket universe.

Of course, then they told him that he was going to be working with the Doctor, and wasn't _that _just going to be a recipe for disaster. Honestly, whoever had come up with that idea needed to have _their _mental state evaluated.

Friends turned enemies turned not-quite friends with a very brief, temporary truce over a common enemy, and now here they were again. It had been hundreds of years for the Doctor, for the Master, a meager seven or eight months. And, oh, the Master could hold a grudge. Not that he was particularly inclined to anymore, for one reason or another, but that could be pondered later.

"Your hair looks ridiculous." The Master eyed the Doctor's floppy brown hair critically. "And your chin."

The Doctor glared. "I would say the same for you, but unfortunately your taste in fashion is impeccable as ever." The Master smirked, but the Doctor kept going. "Dull and boring, but at least you can say it's formal. Seriously, do you wear anything _other _than black?"

The Master huffed, but didn't argue.

"Do you think that we could use a set of... oh, say, a dozen TARDISes, positioned at equidistant points around the planet?" he asked instead. "Lower atmosphere, since we can't really go too much further past the outer atmosphere and it's better to play it safe. Run the coordinates through all ten TARDISes at the same time, have them calculate the exact equations for opening a rift in time by the constellation of Kasterborous and the force it would take to move Gallifrey through."

The Doctor nodded slowly, starting to smile. "Background equations on fields to keep the planet from shaking apart in the cosmic winds, not to mention we'd need gravitational stability and more force to get it spinning at the proper speed. We aren't orbiting anything here, or rotating, everything is just in stasis, but once the planet gets put back between the suns it's going to be a tricky bit of science to make sure it stays put."

"Oh, pah." The Master scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. "Child's play. The Time Lords invented black holes, or have you forgotten?"

"Good point."

"You'll find I tend to have many, unlike yourself."

The Doctor glared.

The Master offered a triumphant smile and looked back at the arguing Time Lords. None of them were paying the two proclaimed wayward children of Gallifrey any attention.

"Head to my TARDIS?" the Doctor asked.

The Master held a hand up and snapped his fingers. One of the dozens of columns lining the hallway hissed, a rectangular crack appearing in the side, and then slid open like a door to show a dark room inside.

"You think I took my own TARDIS when I left?" he asked incredulously in response to the Doctor's surprised expression. "You're more stupid than I thought. If they'd caught me, they'd have quarantined my TARDIS after they brought my back. Nobody's going to notice an extra column in an empty meeting room, however."

"Huh."

Shrugging, the Doctor pushed his chair back and got to his feet, ducking as one of the Time Ladies waved her arms about, gesturing furiously. The Master followed, and they went into the column, lights flickering on and ancient console slowly grinding and creaking to life. The Master tossed a large ream of paper and one of the elaborate calligraphy pens that Time Lords seemed to have in abundance.

"I'll man the computer, you write."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, settling down into a chair and pulling out a pair of reading glasses that had once belonged to an old friend, pushing them up on his nose. "Fine then," he muttered, but as most of their jibes had been lately, it lacked most of its bite and anger that it might have once carried. "No need to get snippy with me."

* * *

**Sorry this one's up so late, homework and I was very busy doing birthday things today. Review? We can call it a belated present.**


	15. Chapter 15

Tianna shifted on her feet, the quiet hospital room seeming almost oppressive. She was used to noise and chaos and as strange as it seemed, when everything was gentle and peaceful she couldn't stand it, feeling uncomfortable in her own skin. Iota and Viram weren't there – it was late at night and they had been taken off to their own beds to get some sleep.

She didn't care for sleeping very much, either. She was sick of lying around doing nothing, and she couldn't stand to feel this groggy and useless for much longer. Maybe one of the matrons would let her go for a walk tomorrow. Or possibly today. Time was irrelevant but they still had the concept of it.

A sigh pushed past her lips as she turned to look out the window. The city didn't look as horrible as it once had been. Less smoke, less fire. The buildings actually looked like buildings. It felt exposed; they had given up on trying to piece the dome back together again and had decided to tear it down and rebuild it a quarter at a time, so they were left wide open to the elements, but it was still better than what it used to be.

Tianna frowned when a strange noise reached her in the silence, and instantly she couldn't help but tense and wish for her rifle back. Not every noise was a Dalek, not every shadow was an enemy, but it was difficult to think that way after so long of believing otherwise.

It was almost like a song, all high, sweet notes, ringing through the mostly silent air. She squinted into the twilight, peering around for its source, but she couldn't seem to find it. Maybe it was very small, or maybe it was just out of her line of vision, but it wasn't unpleasant and didn't seem to be doing her any harm.

She shut the windows and shuffled back over to the bed, sinking down onto the covers with a sigh and closing her eyes.

She wanted to go for a walk tomorrow. And maybe talk to the man that had saved her, or the man that told all the stories...

* * *

Outside, a worker leaning against one of the many construction apparatuses almost dropped his container of water that he had been drinking from, and stared up at the sky, eyes wide.

"Lunartik!" he said in as loud a whisper as he could manage. "Lunartik!"

Another working came skidding around the corner, wrench in hand. "What?" he shouted, coming to a halt.

"Shh!" The first worker glared and raised a finger to his lips. The second one appeared to be slightly panicked.

"Haydia," he hissed. "Haydia, is it the Daleks?"

Haydia waved a hand dismissively. "Shh, just listen."

The two fell silent, and a moment later the chirping noises sounded again. Lunartik's wrench dropped out of his hand and landed with a muffled thud on his boot, but he didn't even say anything, just stared.

"Are those birds?" he breathed after a long few minutes in which they stood and listened to the noise. "Is that birdsong?"

"It is!" Haydia couldn't help it as laughter began to bubble up through his lips. "It is!"

* * *

"That wasn't a very productive meeting," Romana muttered, glaring at the General when all the other Time Lords had left. Androgar, ever-faithful in his assistant duties, stood by the man's side.

The General glared right back, irritated enough by the shouting that he didn't care very much about formalities at the moment. "It wasn't my fault!"

"Actually, sir-" Androgar began.

"Androgar, shut up."

"Yes, sir."

Romana sank into a chair, sighing. "Did anyone find out where the Doctor or the Master went?"

"No, my Lady President," Androgar replied promptly. "However, I did receive a transmission from one of the workers sent to help repair the dome while the meeting was... ongoing."

The older woman eyed him sharply. "What did it say?"

The Time Lord smiled. "Birdsong, my Lady President. The terraforming is working, the birds are coming back."

The darker mood dissipated at the news, and they all seemed just the slightest bit more relaxed.

"Birdsong," the General murmured. "Do you know, I think I've nearly forgotten what it sounds like..."

* * *

It was several hours later – or perhaps it had been a couple of days, neither of them were really sure – when the doors to the Master's TARDIS opened and a woman tutted softly.

"Look at you two, don't you know to take breaks when you're working on a project?"

The Master's hand as he turned a page, and then he blinked, and blinked again, and then he was looking around in bleary confusion with the gaze of someone that hasn't been outside their room in much too long of a time. The Doctor followed a similar process, although he took off his glasses in order to get a better look at his watch.

"Blimey, we missed lunch," he stated, sounding slightly surprised but not quite focused enough to care. "And dinner. And possibly breakfast, but I normally eat that in my TARDIS."

"You never ate when you were working on something."

"Neither did you."

"You're old, I believe you're memory's gone faulty."

Imala, watching them bicker, raised an eyebrow. "And if my son is so old, then what does that make me, hm?"

The Master managed to get to his feet in a dignified manner, and put on his best placating smile. "As beautiful as always, Lady Imala."

She chuckled. "Oh, stop it, you. I'm here to tell you that the Lady President wishes to speak with you two, perhaps under more... civilized conditions."

"Sounds like a lovely plan!" The Doctor got to his feet and twisted, straightening out the kinks in his back. "Is she outside, then?"

"I'm not entirely sure if she was surprised at the TARDIS being here or ready to kill the both of you," Imala agreed. "At any rate, I'm sure you two managed to come up with something more substantial than any of those fools." She shook her head and started walking back towards the door. "Theta, remind me to figure out why I ever went into politics again..."

The two Time Lords shared a glance when she had left.

"She seems to be under the impression that things are back to normal," the Master stated bluntly, after a pause.

"It _is _a nice thought," the Doctor pointed out.

"And I was never one to indulge in fantasies. You and I both know we're never going to be those two children running through the fields."

The Doctor glanced down at the floor. "Yeah."

The Master rocked back and forth on his feet and looked up towards the ceiling, hands clasped behind his back. "I believe it is in the realm of probability, however, that a tentative alliance would not be amiss."

And not meeting the Doctor's gaze, hands still clasped behind his back, he left for the doors. The Doctor chuckled, quickly following.

_I think I'll take you up on that offer, old friend._

* * *

Romana shot them both a look that promised some conversation about paying attention during important meetings and not wandering off, but evidently that conversation was to come later, as she splayed out her hands in an almost helpless gesture.

"We have applied all our formulas and have come up with only more theories," she told them both. "Perhaps you have discovered something more substantial?"

The Doctor shuffled backwards and let the Master talk, only stepping in when he either went off on a tangent, got a little bit too crude in his mutterings, or stopped making sense, which happened a significantly less amount than it would have if the Doctor had been the one to be talking.

When he finished, Romana seemed to be invested in her thoughts and didn't move. A minute passed, then two, then three, five, ten.

"You wish to use the Moment to assist in the calculations," she finally said, voice betraying nothing.

"Yes," the Master agreed.

"A machine created to destroy galaxies."

"Yes," the Doctor said with a nod.

"Pray tell, my Lord Doctor, my Lord Master, _what _does this have to do with freeing Gallifrey?"

"I thought I explained it," the Master responded, huffing. "The Moment is fully capable of opening small time tunnels into the outside world. _And _it's sentient, it can be reasoned with. Using the Moment to calculate what we would need to expand a rip in space-time large enough to shift a planet through would be significantly easier than it would be to use a set of TARDISes, be it ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred."

"And _do _keep in mind what I mentioned before," the Doctor added on.

Romana stared at them for the longest time, but finally she slumped forward, seeming to deflate and looking years older.

"If you think it will work," she sighed. "If you think it will work... then yes, by all means. Doctor, I will send an escort with you into the Omega Arsenal to retrieve the Moment. Master... oh, Gallifrey knows I'll regret this, but I'm putting you in charge of the ten TARDISes requested."

The Doctor looked slightly scared at the Cheshire grin that appeared on the Master's face.

"Go on, now, away, out of my sight. The Citadel is mostly repaired, the citizens have all been gathered, the terraforming is entirely underway and will only speed up once we're back underneath the suns and the stars. I will make a planetwide announcement when you have everything ready, right down to the last detail. I hear of any improvising and I'll have you both back here to be exiled, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am!" The Doctor smirked, saluted.

The Master just shrugged, then turned to the other Time Lord. "So, do you think that old rust bucket of yours is up for moving a planet?"

The Doctor's smirk dropped off his face, and he glared, thoroughly offended on behalf of his ship. "Oi! You watch what you say about her, she's a reliable old girl and I wouldn't take her any differently! _And_, I'll have you know, she's moved a planet before!"

The Master paused. "If you're moved a planet, then pray tell _why_, exactly, you haven't moved this one yet?"

"I had a signal to lock onto, it makes things easier, you know."

"Nah, I just bet you couldn't do it twice."

"Hey!"

Imala, who had been standing quietly off to one side, watched them go.

"Ah, still such children," she murmured fondly.

"Children isn't exactly how I'd put it," Romana griped, rubbing at her forehead. "Definitely not _children_."

* * *

**All right, I actually had this one written before some ridiculous hour of the night so I'm very proud of myself. Clara doesn't seem to want to come in just yet, but no worries! Give it a couple of chapters, and then we'll get loads of old friends making appearances.**

**Feel free to let me know if you spot any typos as well! I've been writing this with a new laptop and the keyboard is a lot bigger than my old one was.**


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor mostly ignored the two guards walking along either side of him and focused on the box in front of him. It was still ticking and clicking away, although the interface still hadn't appeared after a few minutes and he was getting a little bit confused. And slightly embarrassed – all that talk about sentient machines and the one he had said told him that it was lonely wasn't responding.

He glanced back at the guards, then glanced back again for a longer look before he had fully turned all the way around.

"Oh, stop it with the guns," he scoffed, staring at the rifles. "It's not like it's going to hurt us."

Instead of being reassured like he had expected, the guards tensed and readjusted their grip on the weapons. One of them stared at something over the Doctor's shoulder with wide eyes. "Sir-!"

The Doctor turned around and smiled. "Ah! Hello, there! Good to see you again."

"And you, Time Lord," the Moment replied, this time wearing the face of Jack Harkness, although he was still wearing the clothes that Not-Amy had been wearing when he had first met the interface. He sat up on the pedestal, leaning on the small box, and seeming entirely unconcerned about the increasingly nervous guards. "I didn't expect you to come and visit quite so soon."

"Ah, well, I'm always full of surprises." He shot a pointed look at the guards not to do anything stupid and looked at Not-Jack. "No, I'm here for a favor."

The Moment raised an eyebrow. "Using your first visit to ask for a favor? God, Doc, you'd be horrible on a date."

"Oh, shut up." He rolled his eyes. "Theoretically, taking on the appearance of someone shouldn't mean taking on their characteristics."

"True for a _normal_ machine," the Moment agreed. "But it also happens to throw people off, so why do otherwise? Now, what is this mysterious favor, Doctor? I do hope you'll be reasonable."

He caught the underlying hint of a warning and smiled faintly. "No worries. You were able to open time tunnels, to pull me out of the Time Lock and into the future, and pull me and my past selves – or future selves, from that point of view, depending on when you're talking about and which incarnation – back into events that should have been impossible to access."

"I was," the Moment said slowly. "I could do it again as well."

"Well, we were wondering- oh, right, thank you for showing me that other face! It was from my future, very helpful for recognizing strangers." The guards exchanged a confused look.

Not-Jack smirked, flickering briefly into the Master before flickering back again. "You're rambling, Doctor."

The Doctor shrugged, lips curving upwards in a slightly self-deprecating manner. "Force of habit. We're going to be pulling Gallifrey out of this universe, but the calculations to do so would take ages, and some people are chafing at the bit for the High Command to take action. Even compared to the TARDISes, you're the most sophisticated piece of technology on the planet-"

"Remember when I said that if I ever developed an ego, you would get the job?" the interface interrupted, looking thoughtful. The Doctor paused in his flattery. "I think that position might be open soon. _Really_, Doctor, sentience requires some degree of intellect, if you wish for a favor, you come straight out and say it. Or perhaps you have been spending too much time with the politicians?" It chuckled, hopping down from the pedestal and picking up the physical manifestation of the Moment, the box, holding it out.

"Don't worry about not knowing how to work with the software, I'll just connect with whatever console you have prepped to start calculations. But I expect a legitimate visit next time, Doctor! Ah, to hear the universe sing again..."

And as if he had never been there, the interface was gone, leaving the Doctor wandering back down the hallway from where he had came and two incredibly confused and slightly stunned guards standing behind him.

"They said the fool was mad," the one on the left muttered to his companion. "Machines aren't truly sentient."

"It had a sense of humor," the one on the right muttered back faintly.

"Oh, would you two stop chatting and hurry up!" the Doctor shouted over his shoulder. "I can still hear you, you know!"

* * *

The three shuffled down one of the Citadel's many hallways, but the middle child kept glancing around nervously.

"Tianna, are you sure we're allowed to be walking around here?"

The eldest child had her hand on the younger girl's shoulder in a tight grip, although not so tight as to be painful, and was doing her best to maintain balance as they plodded along at a slow pace, stopping every so often for Tianna to catch her breath. There didn't seem to be a lot of people about, either, so nobody bothered them on their impromptu journey.

Viram didn't care whether or not they were allowed to be where they were; the toddler happily sucked on his thumb while teetering through his steps next to Iota

"The matrons won't mind," she dismissed her concerns.

"They got upset when you tried to walk across the room for water," Iota pointed out.

"Which is why I'm bringing you with me, so I'm not alone, and you aren't alone either."

Viram tugged at Tianna's bootlaces, although they didn't notice until he had managed to untie both of them and started trying to pull the boots off. Iota sighed fondly, pulling the toddler into her arms, and Tianna lowered herself into a sitting position in order to retie them.

"Silly boy," she murmured.

Viram giggled.

"Do you think we'll get to see Mister Theta again?" Iota asked when they resumed their slow walking pace. "Or Mister Koschei?"

"Mister Theta saved us from the Dalek," Tianna said, glancing around the hallways again as though she were worried another one might pop out from the floor. "Maybe he'll come back to visit. And Mister Koschei told us such nice stories."

"Is there really a man at the end of the universe?" Iota asked excitedly. "Does he really have a rocket to carry all the people to a brand new place?"

"I wouldn't do," the older girl responded, smiling. "I've never been."

The answer didn't seem to dissuade the other Gallifreyan. "Is that what's going to happen to us, Tianna? Do you think they're going to build a rocket and fly Gallifrey home? Do you think we might get the things the matrons told us about back? The- the- the-"

Stammering over her words, as young children were so apt to do when they got so excited and ahead of themselves they couldn't keep their sentences straight in their head, Iota waved her free hand around to try and convey her meaning. Tianna smiled and gently interrupted.

"The stars?" she asked, and the other girl nodded brightly. "Maybe. Maybe we'll get to see the stars."

"I'd like to see the stars," Iota declared. "They seem pretty."

"That they do..." She glanced over as they turned yet another corner, starting to head back to their rooms. She was starting to get tired despite the fact that they had only been walking for about five minutes. "I bet if we see Mister Koschei again, he'll tell us about the stars. He seems like he's seen very many of them."

"Do you think anyone has seen _all _of the stars, Tianna?" Eyes wide, Iota peered up at her.

"It's a good question, but I don't know the answer."

Tianna looked out one of the windows as they passed by. A halfway built city and a burnt umber sky, the occasional wispy cloud drifting past. It was hard enough to reconcile this quiet home with the one that they had known their entire lives, but the stories that the matrons told seemed almost too good to be true. But perhaps... perhaps now, finally, they could hope.


	17. Chapter 17

Commandor Stoor the Ruthless, leader of the Fourteenth Sontaran Battle Fleet of the Sontaran Empire, rushed through the hallways of the battleship, ignoring the soldiers who snapped to attention with shouts of "Sontar-ha!" as he passed. A datachip was clutched tightly one of his hands, and it was only sheer habit that prevented a dishonorable breach of protocol as he approached the General.

"Stoor," General Baatal greeted. "May you die honorably in battle."

"General Baatal," Stoor replied breathlessly. "May you bring glory to your family name."

"Hm." Baatal nodded smartly. "I haven't been expecting you for another three cycles."

"We were passing through the Zero Quadrant," Stoor explained, lowering his voice and glancing around the bridge discreetly. No one seemed to be paying attention – bridge crew were often little more than drones, they didn't need to strategize. "And a few members of the crew requested that we pay homage to the site of Kasterborous, for it was a truly great battle and long revered amongst our people."

Baatal tilted his head to one side in acknowledgment. "Continue."

"The scar across the universe is great in size and the sky like a void," Stoor said. "Black, no stars. You have seen it?"

"Most of us have," Baatal said, getting just the faintest bit annoyed. "Continue."

"Stars, General. Stars and sky and a planet right in the center of it all."

Baatal was silent, narrowing his eyes. "Impossible," he finally murmured. "Gallifrey is dead."

"I have the datachip here with me," Stoor held up the chip in his gloved hands as an example. "Scans and images taken from the ships external cameras. We double-checked the navigation systems, triple-checked, but they always read out the right coordinates! Ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from the galactic zero center!"

Baatal snatched away the datachip and shoved aside some drone sitting at a console. Surely enough, the coordinates for the former location of Gallifrey appeared and were quickly followed by dozens of still images, recordings, and statistical readouts.

"By the ruler," Baatal stared, blinking several times as though he couldn't quite comprehend. "By the ruler..."

"Sir..." Stoor shifted slightly. "Sir, if it isn't too impertinent of me, what will we do?"

* * *

The Daleks had scurried into a frenzy, zooming about at insanely fast speeds and screaming orders left and right. The parliamentary ship was alive with action, the Dalek Prime Minister demanding that they increase speed.

"_Time Lord presences detected! Plotting course for Gallifrey!"_

* * *

"You're going to fall off that railing and break your neck, and then where will you be? I'm the one with more regenerations than you by this point, and if that doesn't say you're having a bit of a problem then I don't know what does."

The Doctor swung his legs from the balcony like a young child, grinning like a fool at the celebrations echoing across the city.

"Look at them," he laughed. "Look at them! Look at the stars! And the moons, the both of them! We even got the _moons _back."

The Master shook his head. "Sentiment. Pah!"

"Oh, lighten up! Don't think I didn't hear how you've been telling stories to the children in the infirmary while the houses are still being rebuilt."

The Master snorted, but made no comment, instead walking over to look out at the buildings below them.

As had just been stated, high above them were millions of stars swirling across the sky, and two shining moons hung suspended in their midst. The larger of the two, known as Pazithi Gallifreya shone a copper color that was similar to the shade of the afternoon sky, and the much smaller one was a silvery gray. Off in the distance were the mountain ranges, and in the opposite direction were the tattered remnants of Arcadia. The city, deemed unsafe to live in for the time being, had been evacuated shortly before the movement of the planet, leaving the Citadel packed full of jubilant citizens finally free of the looming terrors of war. Bonfires had been lit, adding to the already heated planet, there was music, and parades, and they could hear singing spiraling upwards from the streets.

"Is the transduction barrier in place?" the Doctor asked mildly. The Master briefly looked up towards the sky.

"As far as I know," he replied. "One would hope – the scanners detected a passing fleet not long ago."

"Friendly or hostile?"

"Sontaran."

"Eugh." The Doctor made a face. "Ah, well. Don't suppose we could bring a planet back without attracting some attention. And I don't suppose you'll be around for much longer?"

"Hardly!" the Master scoffed. "This was never truly home, you know that just as well as I. And would you believe that they want to grant me a title?"

"You _are _the heir to your family's seat on the Senate, among other things," the Doctor pointed out. The Master shook his head rapidly, starting to tap his fingers on the stone railing in agitation.

"No, no. Responsibility? Me? Intellect I possess in great abundance, patience for those dottering fools, significantly less so."

"Aren't lacking an ego, either, I see."

"You're one to talk."

They lapsed into silence. A crowd a couple of buildings away burst into ecstatic cheering, and a couple pieces of scrap metal were tossed into the bonfire closest to them.

"At least say goodbye to a couple people before you go," the Doctor blurted. The Master eyed him warily. "My mother, Imala- she may still see us as children, but she does care for us, for you. And the children, I went to see them yesterday. They want to know if you'll come back."

The red-haired man didn't respond for a very long time.

"Sentiment," he repeated finally. "Sentiment, old friend, was always a weakness of yours."

Old friend. Neither of them were exactly sure what the term meant any more or how it applied to them. For they were both old, quite certainly, and they had once been inseparable, and then they were enemies and inevitably bound by fate, and now they were simply two very ancient, weary men in search of stable ground. Wandering hearts, wandering souls, never quite content. Rarely ever at peace, if even for a short amount of time.

"I will consider it," he conceded. "If anyone asks, tell them I went to make repairs."

"Do you suppose we'll meet again?"

The Master had just barely stepped past the doorway when the Doctor spoke up, and he paused with one hand on the wall.

"I fail to see why we would," he replied, not looking back. "But then again, we've always been ones for skewing the odds."

And he was gone.

Looking out on the celebrations, the Doctor smiled.

* * *

Romana didn't come looking for him for several days after that. The celebrations were almost entirely non-stop and the Doctor was able to pay witness to several of the uppity Time Lords that generally were glaring at him and aiming curses in his direction slinging arms around each others shoulders and singing off-key drinking songs. The Master, as far as he knew, hadn't left yet, but no one had seen heads nor tails of him since the day after the planet had been settled to her rightful home. A couple of rumors were floating around that he had been seen every so often walking through the hallways with a gaggle of children following along behind, listening, enraptured, as he regaled them with stories, but those were quickly dismissed. Ridiculous, the man might have a façade of sanity, but he was cracked, certainly in no condition to be near children.

Oh, how little they knew.

Imala told the Doctor that while their home was gone, destroyed in one of millions of battles that were too many to name, technically she still owned the estate on the hills of Mount Lung, and that when she had settled back down there (for she fully intended to when the political upheaval from so many reforms had died down) he was always welcome. The General grudgingly shook his hand at one point, for he could hardly deny courtesy to the man that had saved the planet from fire. Androgar, ever eager to meet the man who he rather regarded as an idol, made for good conversation.

It was two weeks and far too many dull meetings in the midst of the festivities later when the alarms began to blare yet again, and the cheerful mood which had hung over them for so long burst and deflated, leaving them with a ball of lead in the pit of their stomachs. The Doctor tore through the hallways, skidding to a halt in the communications center before he nearly collided with Romana and the General.

"Dalek ships in close proximity," a Time Lady was practiaclly sobbing. "Dozens of them, and the transduction barrier won't withstand a full attack, not yet-"

"Alayia!"

At Romana's rebuttal, the Time Lady sucked in a sharp gasp and quelled her sobs, hands clenched into fists, but her voice level.

"Scans estimate twenty Dalek ships orbiting the planet," she said in a soft tone. "With them is an entire Sontaran war fleet and smaller aircrafts from at least three dozen other species, some of them in power, some newly developed or minor, and the scans don't recognize them."

Romana had paled and was stiff as a board, hardly moving, hardly blinking.

"Doctor," she ordered, and the Time Lord snapped to attention. "Open a video transmission to the Sontarans, speak with them. They are more likely to be dissuaded than the Daleks. General, override the controls to manual, I want all of our power diverted to keeping the transduction barrier up and running. Androgar, with me."

"Ma'am!"

The two swept out of the room, the General hurried to one set of controls, and the Doctor waved his sonic in the vague direction of a panel, causing a viewscreen to spring to life in front of them.

"Ah, hello!" he said with a smile, dropping back to Basic English for the first time in a while. The words were slow and heavily accented, having not actually spoken it in what was coming close to a year. "Hello! Who might I have the honor of speaking to?"

"I am General Baatal the Destroyer of the Fourteenth Sontaran Battle Fleet!" the Sontaran announced, slamming a fist to his chest in a form of salute. "May you die honorably in battle!"

A Time Lord from somewhere in the back of the room let out a muffled sob. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder.

"Don't worry," he murmured, slipping briefly back into Gallifreyan. "Don't worry, it's Sontaran tradition. They're a clone warrior race, remember? They're bred for a specific definition of honor and glory, that isn't a death threat. It's an introduction, they're trying to treat us respectfully."

Turning back to Baatal, he smiled. "And may you bring glory to your the Empire!"

Baatal grinned, a sharp bearing of his teeth. "Ah, you know our customs, Time Lord!"

"I've been around a bit, perhaps more than most. Are you aware that there are Dalek ships not far from your location?"

"Yes, we are aware of that," Baatal acknowledged. "Three of our smaller ships have moved into position should they choose to attack."

The Doctor blinked.

That hadn't been what he expected.

"I'm sorry... intercept?"

"The Daleks are a menace!" Baatal stated. "They do not fight with honor, hiding behind glorified machines. The Time Lords are slightly less worse, but our scans have indicated that your planet has taken the brunt of the Time War and is still in recovery. The rest of the universe has moved on, the Daleks have continued in their quest to destroy it. As such, we will defend the Time Lords for now, if only because we honor your valiant attempts in battle."

The Doctor blinked again. Sontaran logic. Right.

"We... thank you for your assistance, General Baatal," he managed to say, glancing towards the General and dropping into Gallifreyan yet again. "Keep the power to the transduction barrier at maximum, send a message to the Lady President that the Sontarans are here to help." And back to Baatal, "What do you know of the many other ships that are currently orbiting in the outer atmosphere?"

"Curious passerby! Surely this incredible event will have legends written of it."

"Right..." He nodded slowly. "Yes, I imagine it would."

Not quite out of the dark yet, it seemed. And how _ironic _was it, that they would be rescued by the one race that successfully invaded their planet during times of peace... perhaps they would never fully leave the dark. Although for people whose planet's name quite literally translated to "they who walk in shadows," well, maybe it was to be expected...

* * *

**All right, I'm an idiot and despite remembering posting a chapter last night, there is no chapter posted, so clearly, I didn't actually post. Here's two chapters to make up for it, and depending on how the time works out, there'll probably be two chapters either tomorrow or Friday to make up for a different day I missed. As always, I hope you enjoyed, and feedback is welcome!**


	18. Chapter 18

As it turned out, having their own personal battle fleet of Sontarans on their side (and, if Baatal's word was to be taken at face value, the entirety of the Sontaran Empire) was quite a good dissuasion when it came to attacking Daleks.

During the throes of the Time War, the entire universe cowered in fear at Time Lords and Daleks alike. In the years since, the Daleks had furthered their reputation while the Time Lords had fallen into tattered legend. Some still remembered them for what they were, and others yet remembered them through the influence of a single survivor. Time Lords. Arrogant, yes. Powerful – well, certainly, they might have once been, but their arrogance was their downfall. Kind? Hardly, what reason had they to be kind? They didn't concern themselves with other species, which was entirely reasonable.

At any rate, they were hardly remembered the war-crazed species, instead seeing an ancient race in the stages of recovery, and who wouldn't defend such honorable people against a menace like the Daleks?

Gallifrey was becoming quickly apparent, which wasn't how they had intended to reveal themselves, but it gained them quite the defense. The Daleks backed away, but made it clear they were going to come back very soon.

"What did you mean?"

The Doctor glanced over at Romana, the two being decidedly informal that day, having had enough of negotiations for the time being. It was exhausting.

"What did I mean by what?" he replied.

"You said you counted." She looked over at him, expression one of puzzlement and concern. "You said you counted the children. What did you mean?"

His eyes became slightly hollow behind a smiling mask. "Does it matter now? You're all alive."

"Yes," she nodded simply.

His head drooped, and he looked down at the buildings below them.

"No riddles in that one, Romana," he murmured. "No tricks or hidden meanings. One night, one... dark, dark night..." He turned his palms upwards in a helpless gesture. "I counted. Simple as that."

They lapsed into a saddened silence, although it was not as sad as it might have been, with the celebrations still ongoing beneath them.

"I cannot let this planet fall into war all over again, old friend," Romana sighed, looking out on the city of people, unaware of the storms brewing in the sky above them. "I will not let us go back to that, I can't."

"We have more of the universe on our side than we did last time," the Doctor assured her.

"I suppose your interference had to bring _some _good," she teased.

"Oh, you be quiet. You helped me, you know."

"So I did, Doctor. So I did..."

It was roughly noontime, and the skies were a pale orange-yellow at the moment instead of their customary burnt orange. Both suns were beating down upon them with customary intensity, although to Gallifreyans the heat was nothing. They were accustomed to it. Pazithi Gallifreya was faintly visible above the mountain ranges, a darker orange-yellow blot against an orange-yellow backdrop. The two Time Lords looked out at the city, twisted, rusting metal half-encased in a glass dome, and they looked out at the barren fields, which, if the reports were accurate, were covered in a light fuzz of red grass, and they looked at the jagged mountains and the burnt trees slowly coming back to life.

"What would you say to one more? Just for old time's sake?"

She blinked, taking a moment to process what he was asking.

"Doctor- no, _no_." Romana shook her head quickly, even as her mind raced and the Doctor grinned. "No, I am Lady President. I have duties to attend to, I cannot simply _leave planet _when there is the possibility of war brewing-"

"Just _once_, Romana." He was still grinning, looking positively foolish in his childish excitement. "It'd do you good! Don't you want to see the universe out there? It's lived, Romana, and flourished, and grown, even more so than when we first met. There's more than this planet, there's trillions and trillions of life forms just in this galaxy! There's hope out there, Romana!"

"Doctor, we really _shouldn't_-"

"Just a trip to Earth, Romana, for the good old days." He nodded up towards the sky. "It's only going to get busier as more ships start coming in, and you're going to have to deal with diplomatic relations and possibly grant me immunity once the Shadow Proclamation gets wind of things-"

She looked at him sharply. "Doctor-"

"-and you literally won't have time for anything and you're going to be going weeks without sleep pouring over _politics_." He made a face. "Politics, Romana."

"Oh, fine!" She huffed and swatted his arm. "Fine, you daft old man! But just the one trip to Earth, and if you get either of us killed I'm booting you out of the Citadel, you understand me?"

"Crystal clear, Romana!" The Doctor already had her by the hands and was pulling her along, through the twisting hallways of the Citadel and towards the room where his TARDIS was. The doors to the old blue box swung open at their approach, and he was already performing that strange pirouette of a dance that he did when piloting in a good mood. Romana smoothed down her presidential robes, old sense of adventure perking up, and she patted the railing fondly.

"I suppose it would be hard to admit that technology can't be sentient," she said. "Especially not after living in this ship for so long."

"Exactly!" He beamed. "Glad you understand!"

The floor rocked from side to side, and she nearly pitched over the edge of the console. The time rotor began to bob up and down, and he let out a whoop.

"Do you remember _anything _about how to pilot a TARDIS?" she shouted over the sound of the engines, leaning around the console to flip a couple of switches. The flight temporarily stabilized, but then seemed to get even bumpier than before.

"Nope!" came the cheerful reply.

* * *

Earth was rather similar to what she remembered, if incredibly more advanced. Humans had that innate sense of creativity that prompted them to just keep _building_ without really thinking about things first, and as such, in less than fifty years they had turned their primitive planet into a slightly less primitive planet.

The Doctor didn't think twice about darting through the TARDIS doors in his Gallifreyan robes, rushing up to some poor soul's house and knocking on the doors several times more than was necessary. Romana followed at just a bit of a slower pace, and as such she was standing behind the Doctor when the door opened.

"Doctor!"

The human girl was petite, with a round face and dark hair and dark eyes. She didn't seem to notice Romana, nor either of their strange choices in apparel (or strange, at least, for twenty-first century Earth), instead punching the Doctor's shoulder before wrapping him in a brief hug.

"Where've you been?" she demanded to know. "It's been nearly a month, normally you at least let me know when you're going to be busy."

"Sorry!" he said brightly in Gallifreyan, then paused. A look of confusion passed over his features, and the girl's, but then he shook his head and repeated himself in English. "Clara, truly sorry- been a bit longer than a month for me this time 'round- but Clara, _Clara_-"

"Breathe, Chin Boy," 'Clara' chuckled. "I'm just joking with you. Who's your friend?"

"Clara!" The Doctor bounced on his feet like a two-year-old with a sugar rush. "Clara, Clara, this is Romanadvoratrelundar-"

"Call me Romana," Romana interrupted quickly, hoping she got the wording right in English. It had been a while since she needed to speak a different language.

"-and she's Lady President of Gallifrey! Great friend of mine, we used to travel."

"Really? That's- that's..." Clara slowly stilled, her eyes widening. "Hold on, did you just say _Lady President of_-"

"Yes!" He clapped his hands together a few times.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously!"

"Really seriously?"

"Isn't it _wonderful_!"

And they were both laughing and jumping and hugging each other, and Romana supposed that if this was a woman who kept the Doctor company for some brief time during those dark days in which he believed Gallifrey was gone, and if this was the same Clara that convinced him to change things, then leaving Gallifrey might not have been too horrible of an idea.

* * *

**Two _weeks_ of vacation. More time for writing. And sleep. But mostly writing.**


	19. Chapter 19

They sat around a small table inside the small house – and it was incredibly small, Romana didn't think that it could be very much bigger than the console room of a Type Gamma TARDIS, or perhaps the console room was the bigger of the two. The room they were in was equally tiny. Humans, how did they managed with everything so _small_?

The human girl had poured them each some beverage called tea, which the Doctor seemed to love, as did the girl, and Romana was grateful for anything clean after such a long time at war. Conversation between the other two was eager, excited, although Romana wasn't sure who was feeling more uncomfortable at the moment.

On one hand, it took a fool to miss the similarities between the Lady President and the human. Not that they bore any resemblance to each other, but both were small in stature, with a round face and dark eyes and dark hair. So she couldn't help but mentally compare herself with the other girl, and she was sure the Doctor was doing the same underneath his shabbily guarded mind. And then the differences, oh, differences. So long had the concept of status been pushed into her mind that she found it difficult to think any other way, even though she knew she had, once upon a time.

The Doctor wore traditional Gallifreyan robes of red and gold, but his were shabby and out of style, and between that unacceptable breach of conduct and his reputation as a madman it made him stand out all the more. Romana was still dressed in presidential robes, the most elaborate thing anyone could wear even in their simplest form, so that the difference in class would be clear between the ruler and everybody else. Clara, conveniently enough, was wearing red, but next to them she looked horribly underdressed. Or perhaps it was the two of them, overdressed, on such a backwater planet?

Either way, it seemed the Doctor fully intended to take them all back to Gallifrey when their conversation was done, and while Romana had a great deal to say on that matter she couldn't get a word in edgewise. They were being dragged out of the door before either of them could protest – and _really_, she was the Lady President and _not _to be treated in such a manner! – and they were suddenly back in the TARDIS console room, with the doors shut tight and the time rotor already bobbing up and down and away as the engines started without any prompting.

With a practiced ease, both Romana and the human grabbed onto the railing, sharing a brief smile as they did so. It seemed the Doctor never really changed, even if his face did every now and again.

She did have to speak up, though, really, she was obligated to. They couldn't be bringing lesser creatures back home.

Since when did she start thinking of humans as lesser creatures?

"Doctor, are you sure it is wise?" she called over the noise of the engines, dropping into Gallifreyan so it would only be the two of them that would understand what she was saying. "To bring a human onto Gallifrey while the planet is in her current condition, it would be a very bad idea."

"You worry too much!" came the cheerful response, and her lips thinned in frustration at his careless attitude. The Doctor just kept up his dance around the controls, pausing briefly every so often to grin at Clara. "She was a Time Lady once. And she's got the yellow and red dress, just give her one of those insanely heavy headdresses and she'll fit right in!"

Romana, who happened to be wearing one such headdress (and yes, they were heavy, but hardly as heavy as he implied them to be), glared at the slight against traditional Gallifreyan wear, but her expression was mostly that of puzzlement and a slight hint of worry. "Sorry, _Time Lady once_-"

"It's complicated, and if I told you then you might have to banish me. Don't worry about it!"

She seemed to be doing a lot of glaring nowadays. If she didn't have a strict composure to keep up, she would take the opportunity to knock some sense into the Doctor's thick skull via way of beating it against the time rotor.

"As soon as my term is over," she bit out, "you and I are going to have a serious conversation as to what foolishness you've gotten up to without being supervised."

The Doctor's pout was similar to that of a child being reprimanded by their mother. "It wasn't _my _fault that she stepped into my timestream!"

"She did _what_-"

But the ship landed with a thud, per normal for it, and Clara watched the two of them with slightly raised eyebrows.

"I'll talk with anyone that says you need to leave," the Doctor assured her in a firm tone, walking towards the door, and that was that. "Besides, everyone is saying we need to open up diplomatic relations but nobody wants to breach their own comfort zone. Ah well. Why not start now, I suppose?"

* * *

Outside in the meeting hall, after summoning the General and Androgar, the General was directed towards Romana and the Doctor casually slung an arm over Androgar's shoulders. The poor Time Lord looked uncomfortable, but also not too entirely upset.

"Androgar!" he said cheerfully. "Smashing to see you, I've been meaning to talk to you..."

Romana watched for a few moments, shook her head, and told the General to start calling the other senators into the room for more discussions. Oh, how she hated politics.

Neither the Doctor or Romana, or any of the Time Lords in the room, for that matter, caught the absolutely awestruck expression on Clara's face as she stepped out of the blue box parked off to one side. Abandoned dining hall turned storage turned meeting room it may be, but the stained glass windows and single normal window down the end of the hall were at least the size of Clara's house, and the columns were a few hundred feet high at the least, and the light from twin suns sent colored specks dancing across the floor. Through the plain window at the very end of the hall she could see the Citadel in the process of being repaired, and the slightly smoking buildings and the blackened planes and the scorched mountains.

Standing next to the plainly familiar TARDIS, it didn't take long for the entering Time Lords to pick up that something wasn't right, and the murmurs starting, and the whispers started, and Clara started to shrink down underneath the scrutiny.

The Doctor didn't even glance up, or appear to notice her discomfort. "Clara, draft."

She paused, not quite understanding until the proverbial light bulb clicked on over her head.

"Sorry," she murmured back, voice surprisingly loud in the meeting hall, and the doors clicked shut with a snap of her fingers.

The murmuring died down after that. The Doctor nodded, a self-satisfied smile pasted onto his face, and turned back to his conversation with Androgar. The latter seemed particularly inclined to pester the older man with questions after the new display. Romana raised a thin eyebrow, but said nothing, and the Master walked into a room full of mutinously silent politicians, a renegade Time Lord regaling the second-in-command of the Gallifreyan army with stories of his travels, the first human to set foot on Gallifrey in almost a millennium, and the Lady President watching it all with tired bemusement and doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

He paused to take in the scene, briefly considered turning and walking straight back out of the room, before finally wandering down past the rows of Time Lords before coming to a stop next to the human, who he watched with slightly narrowed eyes.

"Human," he murmured, eyes narrowing even further. "Stray of his?"

The girl shrugged slightly, still a bit stunned from the sheer size of the room and as such not being as insulted as she might have been otherwise. "I suppose I prefer the term friend?" she murmured. "I mean... he's a friend to me, and I like to think that I helped a little bit in his life, if nothing else."

His eyes narrowed to slits before he schooled his face back into a slightly more normal expression. He had still been speaking Gallifreyan, he hadn't dropped into Basic English, he'd forgotten. TARDISes were programmed not to translate Gallifreyan, since the language was sacred. So how...?

"I suppose the term would fit," he agreed with a slight nod. "You are a fascinating specimen, Clara Oswald. Quite fascinating..."

Clara edged away from him slightly.

* * *

The human went to go and sleep in her room in the blue-shelled TARDIS, and the Master and the Doctor found themselves tinkering aimlessly in the console room.

"You ought to help your stray with meditation," the Master called down through the glass floor. "She's broadcasting like you wouldn't believe. I _hate _species with innate telepathic power and no idea that it exists." His lips twisted into a frown, and he prodded at a random lever until he received a slight shock for his troubles. "And what have you _done _to the place?" he demanded to know.

"I haven't had a planet to go to for repairs for several centuries," came the defense. "I have to improvise!"

"This isn't improvising," the Master groaned, shaking his head. "Cruelty to TARDISes and an insult to technological ingenuity."

"Says the one who turned her into a paradox machine."

"_That _was improvising," he countered, "and thoroughly inventive considering what I had to work with."

"Negated by the fact that you used it to try and take over the world and destroy most of the known universe."

"Admire the skill of the execution, do not question the audacity of the executioner."

"Hush, you're starting to sound like Queen Elizabeth."

The Master blinked several times in confusion, trying to make sense of the seemingly random and out of context comment. After he had taken several minutes to ponder it and came up with no conclusion, the conversation had trailed off and they lapsed into silence for a long time, the only noise being the hum of the ship and the occasional spark or creak from beneath the floor.

* * *

**So I've been really good at missing my update schedule, and as such you're probably going to get bombarded with chapters throughout the course of the next few days. Figure I ought to warn you all in advance. As always, I hope you enjoy, and Happy Holidays!**


	20. Chapter 20

"So are you taking the children with you?"

Today was just full of sudden and random comments. The Master, still pacing around the upper half of the console room while the Doctor supposedly repaired things below, came to a metaphorical screeching halt while he brain temporarily went into overdrive.

"Sorry, what?"

There was a long sigh, the clatter of tools, and the other Time Lord clambered up over the railings instead of taking the stairs to get so he was standing next to him.

"You spend most of your time in the infirmary with those three," he pointed out. "They're orphans, too, so as much as it hurts to say it there's going to be nobody around to miss them. You told me you were leaving _weeks _ago, too, which is my main point here." The Doctor chuckled. "I _know _you, even if they had you locked up a thousand miles underground and your TARDIS was on the furthest moon, you'd have three different plans, all with backups, to get yourself out."

The Master glared, but didn't argue. The other man was right, after all.

"So, that being said, your TARDIS is literally right next to the meeting table where we meet every day. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from leaving, therefore something is keeping you here. Anyone could figure that out, and it's not hard to go from there and say that you're staying for them." He smiled and leaned up against the railing. "Look at you, acting all soft. I think you're starting to scare people, you know."

"You be quiet."

"Hah!" He tossed that infuriating smirk over his shoulder as he wandered down the stairs. "Not a chance."

* * *

Negotiations were going surprisingly well. The legend of the Time Lords still held a little bit of sway, so people were less inclined to attack them. Better be paranoid then dead in their minds, however, so they were still skittish, but Romana had agreed to start extending diplomatic relations out to nearby star systems.

The Master was becoming more and more scarce as time went by. If he had been difficult to find before he was impossible to find now, yet he was still on the planet, occasionally showing up to irritate the officials during their meetings or something similar. The Doctor was also starting to edge away. Oh, he would come back, he couldn't _not _come back, but he couldn't _stay_. He didn't know how to stay in one place, not after so long. And he talked to Romana, who said that if he was going to leave then he ought to do it soon because there were some that wanted to arrest him and some that wanted to nominate him for President and give him a couple dozen titles and they were starting to come to a conclusion.

He laughed, told her that they couldn't make him do anything he didn't intend to, and wandered off.

Imala was setting about restoring her estates, all the while devoting her time to the infirmary and helping reunite families together. So many separated, so many lost, so many dead, but she had to keep trying.

Clara, well. A human could hardly be welcome on Gallifrey, and nobody could quite understand the Doctor's meaning in bringing her here, so she spent most of her time inside the TARDIS or in the infirmary. Imala had declared that any friend of her son's was welcome and ushered her along, and the children seemed fascinated by her, so everyone else let it be.

Androgar had been put in charge of the diplomatic arrangements while Romana was trying to do fifty other things. The General helped her a great deal, considering they were trying to condense their military for the time being and he had little else to do otherwise. The dome around the Citadel was almost finished, something which everyone was quite pleased about, and the people had a solid week of celebrations when a single tree began to grow leaves.

Things were starting to look up, quite certainly.

* * *

"Clara!" The Doctor smiled, falling into step alongside her as she turned the corner. The woman jumped, having been entirely unaware of him being anywhere close to her, but kept her composure. "Clara, I just realized I haven't even shown you around! I mean, you've seen the infimaries, right, and the storage room, but you have to see the other things! It's beautiful Clara, it's beautiful, you'll love it!"

"Hold on," she said as he started to pull her along. "Hold on, storage room?"

"Yes, that meeting place where I keep the TARDIS parked sometimes." Her confused expression turned to one of shock. "It used to be a banquet hall, but people didn't really _do _that sort of thing anymore so it was used for storage. We only turned it into a meeting room since refurbishing the others after they destroyed wasn't a high priority."

"That's a _closet_?" she squeaked. "But it's huge!"

"Yep!" he agreed cheerfully. "Time Lord science, Clara. The cities are massive, the rooms inside the cities are even larger."

"Those windows are the size of a house!"

"You haven't seen houses here!" He came to a skidding halt in front of another window, this one perhaps a little bit larger than one of the ones in the meeting room, but from here they could see the entirety of the city and the mountains and the hills beyond it. A single support beam curved around the edge of the dome in their field of vision, arching up and up and up until it disappeared overhead. The trees were still tiny skeletal spikes of black clawing upwards, but people were swearing up and down that some had leaves. The soil was covered in a thick red fuzz that would eventually be rolling hills of grass once more.

It was late afternoon, at the moment, so the second sun had almost disappeared at the horizon while the first sun was about three quarters of the way down in the sky, hanging just above the mountaintops. Both moons were also visible, and the angle was _just _so that the buildings looked like they were made of molten gold underneath the darkening orange sky.

He had intended for Clara to focus more on the architecture, which was equally magnificent, if not a bit blinding to look at due to the time of day, but she seemed breathless.

"It's beautiful!" she gasped, spinning to face him before quickly looking back. "I mean- you _told _me it was beautiful, and I believed you, of course I did! But that's... it's _amazing_."

"They called it the Shining World of the Seven Systems," he said proudly, looking out at the scene. "Although it would be calls, now, wouldn't it? Present tense. Hah! I can talk about it in present tense." The Doctor seemed almost giddy at the prospect. Clara folded her arms on the window sill, which seemed positively ridiculous compared to the size of the window when one took it into consideration, and quite possibly could have stood there for hours upon hours had it not been for the sudden voice coming from her other side.

"Did I here something about a tour?" The Master's deep voice jolted her out of her thoughts, and she skittered away, startled.

"Don't _do _that!" she exclaimed.

The Master smiled. "I do what I please."

"Oh, be quiet," the Doctor sighed. "And I don't know _why _you would hear anything about a tour, it's just been us walking."

"I told you to help her with meditation, but did you listen? No. All I can hear is a little human voice jabbering away next to my ear, it's ridiculous!"

"Hold on, you can hear my-"

"It's not my fault humans are telepathically inept! And she's in the TARDIS most of the time, not like it matters that much, she's shielded there."

"You can _hear my thoughts-_"

"God, you're ignorant sometimes." The Master rolled his eyes and tapped Clara's forehead. She jerked backwards, stumbling slightly, but otherwise remained standing. "There you go, all shielded."

Clara rubbed at her head, eyeing the Master warily. "You can all hear my thoughts and no one told me?"

"Telepathic species, not that hard," the red-haired man shrugged. "And no one else cares, they don't pay you any attention."

"Are you being _nice_?" the Doctor asked. "Should I be worried about you?"

"It was for my own personal benefit, no other reasons involved."

"_Sure_." Again with that _infuriating _smirk of his. "Well, you're here now, you can join us!"

"No, Doctor, I will _not_-"

* * *

Two hours later and they were still wandering through the hallways of the Citadel. Clara was relatively sure that they had gotten lost quite a few times, and while the Doctor had eventually gotten them out of it or some random Time Lord or Lady had pointed them in the proper direction, it was getting a bit worrisome. Then again, she was fairly sure that the Master knew exactly where they were the entire time and was just staying quiet for his own amusement. She wouldn't put it past him. The man scared her a little bit, and the Doctor seemed to either skirt warily around him or argue with him like an old friend, and the attitude remained the same for him to the Doctor.

Then there were the other Time Lords, the politicians, and none of them liked her, but she didn't really care for them that much either so nothing lost in that area. The Lady President, Romana, she was rather nice, and the Doctor had said that they were once friends. Still friends, if his cheerful attitude around her was anything to go by. The General could stand to loosen up a bit, and Androgar was sweet, if a bit misinformed. The children, though, the children were wonderful. So young and full of life, and none of them had ever known a time of peace before now and Clara would do anything to keep their eyes so light and carefree.

A few of them had mentioned a Mister Koschei, which was the name that the Master had told her to call him by. They'd said that he told them stories about faraway stars and promised he would take them there one day. Looking at the stiff man, she wasn't entirely sure, but maybe he had his nice moments. She couldn't judge, she hardly knew him.

They walked through cavernous hallways and the Doctor showed her the remains of one of the real meeting rooms. It was being held in stasis until a later time to prevent further damage, so they couldn't go in, but each of the windows in that room were about half the size of the closet turned meeting room that the Doctor's TARDIS was parked in. It was completely mind-boggling, but neither Time Lord seemed fazed by it. Everything here was so _massive_, it was a little bit terrifying.

They took a brief venture out into the city streets, chatting aimlessly with the celebrating citizens, all of whom were too busy to notice the human in their midst. They poked through the crumbling walls of where the gardens used to be, although there were some weeds and birds here and there instead of absolutely nothing like there once had been. The Doctor took her to another window, showed her where the mountains were and named each peak, and pointed out where his parent's estate had been. He pointed out where the Master's estate had been, too, when the other man refused to take part in the conversation. Evidently the fact that he was there at all meant that he was being social.

There were the shipyards, visible from yet another window, and other meeting halls, and they accidentally stumbled into a courtroom. Thankfully nothing was in progress, but there was a guard patrolling and so they left before he noticed. The Doctor was giggling like a schoolboy, and Clara couldn't help but join in. The Master just looked at them both, scoffing, before pulling them along by their sleeves.

It had been a long day, all things said and done, and the Doctor and the Master found themselves alone yet again in the console room. No repairs were ongoing, however, and the two just sat on one of the stairs in the dim blue lighting.

"I'd still like to know why she speaks Gallifreyan," the Master finally said. "You haven't been _teaching _her, have you?"

"No, no." The Doctor dismissed the idea quickly. "Even I wouldn't go about teaching any old human Gallifreyan, friend or not. They couldn't pronounce half of it, anyway, human vocal cords aren't made for it."

He fell back into silence, and the Master waited impatiently. "That's not an explanation!" he finally bit out.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Okay, as far as I can tell? The TARDIS likes her so she's translating everything, and Clara was a Time Lady in one of her past lives so there's probably some innate knowledge or something."

By the time the Master had worked past a stage of incoherent spluttering and a repeat of _what the hell did you DO_ playing in his mind, the Doctor had already hurried out the door.


End file.
